Terms of service

Draft — not yet reviewed by a lawyer, and not yet in effect. Do not take payments against this.

Not yet published. Operated by Jason Wang, a sole proprietor located in Houston, Texas. Questions: jason.j.wang@gmail.com.

What the service does

You upload a video of yourself and a photograph of somewhere. Video Magic produces a video that places you inside that photograph. That is the whole of it.

Your account

You need an account to use the service, you must be 18 or older, and you are responsible for what happens under your login. Tell us if you think someone else has it. You can sign in with an email address and password or with Google; if you use both, they are the same single account.

Giving us your email address before you make an account signs you up for occasional email about the product, and nothing else — it creates no account, holds no credits, and costs nothing. Every one of those emails has a one-click unsubscribe link that works immediately.

Your files stay yours

You keep every right you had in the video and the photograph you upload, and in the finished result. You give us permission to store and process those files only in order to make your video and to keep it available to you afterwards.

We do not use your files to train anything, and we do not use them as examples, in marketing, or anywhere else, unless you tell us in writing that we may.

What you are promising us

You have the right to use both files.
Everyone identifiable in them has agreed to appear in a video made this way.
You will not upload anyone else's likeness without their permission, and you will not use the service to make anybody appear to say or do something they did not.
You will not use it for anything unlawful, or to mislead someone about a property in a way the law does not allow.

Showing somewhere you were not

When you upload a photograph, the place in your video is that photograph, unaltered — the camera move is a crop travelling across it, and nothing is repainted or invented. The finished video still shows you standing somewhere you were not physically standing.

When you ask us to draw or edit a backdrop

Two of the studio's tools produce a backdrop that is a model's work rather than a photograph of a place as it is:

Drawing one from a description. The result is not a photograph of anywhere. Do not use it to represent a real property.
Editing a photograph you took — of anywhere, a room, a beach, a street — where you type what should change and a model edits the picture. It is asked to keep the camera position, the perspective and the light as photographed and to leave alone anything you did not mention, but what changes is your instruction, not a fixed list. Your original photograph is kept and you can put it back at any time.

Labelling either of them is your responsibility. A virtually staged photograph of a property for sale is generally expected to be disclosed as such, and the advertising rules that already apply to you apply to the video you make from it. We show you which kind of background a video has, on the video, every time — but we are not the one advertising, and we cannot label your post for you.

Adding or removing furniture is ordinary virtual staging. Changing the place itself — a finish, a fitting, a view, its condition — is a different thing, and where the picture is of somewhere real that you are advertising it can misrepresent what is on offer. The tool will do what you ask; deciding what is fair to ask is yours, and you agree here not to use it to mislead anyone about a real property.

Changing how you look

The appearance tool runs a model over the video of you, before anything else happens, and changes one thing you describe — your clothing, your hair, your skin. It is asked to keep you recognisably yourself and to keep your movement and the background as filmed, but it is a model and the result is its work rather than a recording of you.

Use it on yourself. Do not use it on video of anybody who has not agreed to it. And if you are advertising something, be aware that altering a person's body or face in a commercial image is separately regulated in some countries and by some platforms, on top of anything that already applies to you.

Deciding whether that needs a disclosure is yours, and it depends on what you are using it for. The platform you post to may have its own rules about synthetic media, and if you are advertising something — a property, a venue, a service — the advertising rules that already apply to you apply here too. For Texas real-estate licence holders that means TREC's. We do not give legal advice and this paragraph is not any.

Credits and payment

Credits are bought in advance. One credit is one finished render. A credit is reserved when you press Render and is only spent once the video is in your account; if the render fails, it comes back automatically. Credits do not expire and have no cash value. Refunds are here.

What we do not promise

We cannot promise that any particular pair of files will produce a result you like. Whether a composite works depends heavily on how the video was lit and shot, which is why we show you six real frames from the finished shot before you spend anything, and why the shooting guide exists. The service is provided as it is, without warranties beyond those the law will not let us disclaim.

If something goes wrong

To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for anything connected with the service is limited to what you have paid us in the twelve months before the problem, and we are not liable for lost profits or lost business.

Ending it

You can close your account at any time and we will delete your files — see the privacy policy. We may suspend an account that breaks these terms. Unused credits are refundable if we close your account for a reason that is not your fault.

Changes, and which law applies

If these terms change materially we will email you before the change applies. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, and any dispute belongs in the courts of Harris County, Texas.