Use Oakgen’s Image Editor to develop an approved storyboard panel into a cleaner individual reference, then move the accepted frame into Oakgen’s AI Video Generator. First, extract that panel from your AI storyboard contact sheet in an external crop editor. Measure its real pixel dimensions, remove borders and captions, and decide whether the crop is good enough or needs recreation. A large sheet does not mean each panel is large.
The goal is one clean image per intended shot, with enough detail and the right composition for motion. This guide starts with an existing grid; it does not repeat the script-to-storyboard planning process.
Turn Approved Panels into Individual Frames
Use Oakgen to refine a selected panel, approve its details, and prepare it for a separate video shot.
Choose crop, upscale, or recreate
| Panel condition | Next step | What that step cannot promise |
|---|---|---|
| Sharp, clean, already the right ratio | Crop and export unchanged | Cropping adds no detail |
| Clean composition but small dimensions | Evaluate an upscale or recreate at target size | More pixels do not verify missing details |
| Captions outside the picture | Crop them away | Cropping cannot recover anything hidden by text |
| Text painted across the subject | Recreate or repair the affected frame | Repair may change the face, object, or pose |
| Wrong aspect ratio | Reframe, expand, or recreate deliberately | One method cannot preserve all framing automatically |
| Tiny face or product logo | Use a better reference or generate separately | A tiny crop is not authoritative identity evidence |
This handoff matters for creators, agencies, and small filmmaking teams. A storyboard can be excellent for discussing the edit while being unsuitable as the actual image input. Treat approval of the story and approval of the production frame as separate decisions.
Reviewed October 19, 2026. Oakgen is our product. We checked its editing workflow and reviewed current frame-splitting tools and image-to-video guidance. The dimensions and shot examples below are illustrative calculations, not screenshots from a generated film or a quality benchmark.
Start with the original sheet, not a screenshot
Download the largest original grid file available. A screenshot of the sheet inside a browser often includes interface elements and may reduce its pixel dimensions. Enlarging that screenshot later does not restore the original information.
Keep a copy of the whole sheet unchanged. Number the intended shots in reading order, and note whether that order actually matches the edit. A generated grid may include variations, duplicate poses, or an unused panel. You do not need to animate every cell merely because it exists.
Record the sheet width and height in pixels, row count, column count, outer margins, and internal gutters. Also check whether the panels are truly uniform. Uneven borders or captions can make a mathematically even division cut through the picture.
If you still need to decide what each shot means, use the script-to-video storyboard workflow. Here, assume the visual sequence has already been selected and you are preparing the files that will enter production.
Calculate the actual resolution of each panel
Consider an illustrative sheet measuring 3072 by 2048 pixels, arranged as three columns and two rows with no margins or gutters. Each panel contains 1024 by 1024 pixels. It is a square image, even if the overall sheet looks wide.
A 1920 by 1080 sheet divided into three columns and three rows produces panels of only 640 by 360 pixels. The sheet is Full HD; each panel is not. If someone calls every panel “1080p” because the contact sheet has 1080 rows, that calculation is wrong.
Borders reduce the usable area further. Suppose a 3072 by 2048 sheet has a 24-pixel margin on every outside edge and 12-pixel gutters between three columns and two rows. The available width is 3072 minus 48 minus 24, giving 3000 pixels, or 1000 per panel. The available height is 2048 minus 48 minus 12, giving 1988, or 994 per panel.
Those dimensions describe the cell before any internal caption or letterboxing is removed. If a caption occupies 74 rows inside each cell, the image area becomes 1000 by 920. Measure the actual picture rectangle rather than treating the whole cell as usable footage.
Reusable panel-size worksheet
| Item | Width calculation | Height calculation |
|---|---|---|
| Whole sheet | Measured file width | Measured file height |
| Remove outer margins | Subtract left plus right | Subtract top plus bottom |
| Remove gutters | Subtract gutter width times gaps | Subtract gutter height times gaps |
| Divide into cells | Divide by column count | Divide by row count |
| Remove internal furniture | Subtract picture-side padding | Subtract captions and letterboxing |
| Final crop | Actual exported width | Actual exported height |
These calculations assume a regular grid. For irregular panels, measure each crop individually. Do not round a fractional result silently and apply it repeatedly across the sheet; the last column can end up with a different boundary.
Extract panels with an external crop editor
For a small sheet, manual cropping is often the clearest method. Open a duplicate in an image editor, select the first picture rectangle, and export it as a separate file. Work from the unchanged sheet for each subsequent panel so you do not progressively crop away the rest of the board.
Use guides or numeric selection coordinates when your editor supports them. Zoom in around the crop edges and exclude divider lines, neighboring imagery, handwritten arrows, and captions. A one-pixel border is still part of the input image and can become an unwanted visual feature.
For many panels, a dedicated splitter can reduce repetitive work. FXI’s Board-Chop documentation describes automatic grid splitting, while FrameCap’s frame cutter allows detected rectangles to be adjusted. These are external utilities, not features of Oakgen’s Image Editor. Review every detected box rather than assuming detection equals approval.
Export each panel at its native cropped size first. PNG is a useful working format when you want to avoid introducing additional lossy compression. A PNG saved from an already compressed source does not reverse that earlier compression, so keep expectations tied to the original file.
Name outputs by shot and revision, such as “shot-03-doorway-crop-v1.png.” Avoid names that imply approval before review. Keep the complete sheet alongside the individual files so composition decisions remain easy to trace.
Decide what to do with the aspect ratio
A square panel and a vertical video are different compositions. Do not stretch the square into a tall rectangle: it distorts faces, products, and room geometry. Choose whether to crop the sides, add scene area, or recreate the shot for the target format.
For example, cropping a 1024 by 1024 square to 9:16 while retaining the full height yields a width of 576 pixels. That removes 448 pixels of width in total. A centered crop removes 224 from each side, which may cut off the second character or an important prop.
Draw the intended crop before generating anything. Check headroom, hands, movement direction, and space for eventual captions. A face centered perfectly in a still may leave no room for the person to turn or for a product to enter the frame.
Expansion asks a generative system to invent additional surroundings. Recreation asks it to interpret the whole shot again. Either can solve framing, but both require another continuity review. Choose the method based on what must remain fixed rather than which option sounds most advanced.
Use the accepted target ratio consistently across the sequence unless mixed framing is deliberate. An edit that alternates accidentally between square, wide, and tall compositions is harder to evaluate and may introduce avoidable crops later.
Recreate a weak panel without losing its purpose
Suppose shot three shows a courier holding a blue parcel in a doorway. In the contact sheet, the pose is readable but the face and parcel label are small. The useful information is the composition and action; the tiny pixels should not be treated as a reliable final face or exact label.
Bring the individual crop into Oakgen’s Image Editor as the current image. Use an available editing model and review its supported settings. Optional extra references depend on the model’s image-input capability; do not assume every selected model receives every reference in the same way.
An illustrative instruction is: “Create one individual frame based on this panel. Keep the courier’s position on image-left, the blue parcel held at chest height, the open doorway behind, and the eye-level camera angle. Produce a clean single scene without grid borders, captions, arrows, or additional panels. Preserve the intended pose and framing.”
Add accurate character or product references when the selected workflow supports them. Explain their roles plainly: the panel defines composition; the reference defines the person or object. Avoid supplying several contradictory faces and expecting the model to know which one is authoritative.
This process is recreation, even if the result looks like a sharper crop. Compare the new frame with both the panel and the approved identity reference. Check hand positions, parcel size, doorway geometry, gaze, and costume details before accepting it.
Prepare one difficult panel in Oakgen before recreating the whole sheet. If the approach changes the scene’s meaning, correct the brief while the production scope is still small.
Why upscaling is not the same as recovering detail
Upscaling can make a small frame more usable, but it cannot prove the true contents of an unreadable logo or tiny face. A sharper-looking pattern may be inferred rather than recovered. That distinction matters when a frame must represent a specific person or product.
Choose upscaling when the composition is already right and the remaining problem is presentation size or softness. Choose recreation when the picture contains structural defects, missing objects, wrong framing, or information too ambiguous to preserve reliably.
Inspect an upscale at the delivery size and at full resolution. Look for invented texture, halos, crunchy edges, and inconsistent lettering. More pixels are useful only when the result passes the same content checks as the original.
Do not spend video credits hoping motion will repair a bad still. Runway’s image-to-video guidance explains that the input establishes composition and visual appearance, and that defects can become more visible during animation. Fix or replace the input first.
Make every frame ready for its intended movement
A production frame should make the next action possible. If a person is already pressed against the edge of the image, there may be little room for the planned walk. If a hand already covers the product, a short clip may spend its whole duration hiding the feature you wanted to reveal.
Write one motion note beside each approved frame. For the courier, that might be a small handoff gesture while the camera remains steady. Keep the motion brief separate from the original storyboard caption, which may contain dialogue, editing notes, or multiple actions.
Then select an image-to-video mode in Oakgen’s AI Video Generator that accepts the relevant image input. Check its displayed requirements and available duration and aspect-ratio settings. An image file passing upload validation does not establish that it is a strong creative input.
Review the resulting shot against its approved frame and neighboring shots. Did the blue parcel become a different size? Did the character change wardrobe? Did the camera cross to a different side of the doorway? Those are continuity decisions, not file-extraction problems.
For choosing first-frame, last-frame, and reference roles, use the frame-reference guide. A contact-sheet panel is one reference asset; it does not automatically specify an entire clip’s temporal behavior.
The final handoff package
Give the next person the unchanged sheet, numbered cropped panels, approved recreated frames if any, and a short manifest. The manifest should distinguish raw crop, revised candidate, and approved production input. It should also state the target ratio and intended motion.
Record why a panel was recreated. “Face too small to identify” is actionable; “needed better quality” is not. Keep the rejected version when it explains a recurring issue, but make the approved file unmistakable.
A useful final check is to view all approved frames together at the same display size. This can reveal color shifts, changing costume details, and inconsistent room layouts that were less obvious in isolated reviews. Then inspect the actual full-resolution files one last time.
The technical handoff is complete when each shot has its own clean file, known dimensions, an explicit approval state, and a motion plan. A neatly sliced grid is only the beginning of that process.
Move from Storyboard to Approved Video Input
Refine the panels that need work in Oakgen, then animate the individual frames that pass your composition and continuity checks.
Download the editable review worksheet to record inputs, decisions, and approval notes for your own project.
Frequently asked questions
Can I upload the entire storyboard grid to an image-to-video model?
Some workflows may accept a grid as reference, but an ordinary first-frame input represents the whole image, including dividers. For a separate shot, use its individual panel unless the selected model explicitly documents a different multi-panel workflow.
Does cropping a contact sheet lower its quality?
A crop retains the selected source pixels if exported without resizing or additional lossy compression. It reveals how few pixels the panel already had. The sheet’s overall dimensions do not belong to each individual frame.
How large is each panel in a 1920 by 1080 three-by-three grid?
With no margins or gutters, each panel is 640 by 360 pixels. Borders and captions reduce the usable picture area further. Measure the actual crop before choosing the next production step.
Can Oakgen automatically split a storyboard grid?
The workflow in this guide uses an external crop editor or grid splitter for extraction. Oakgen is used afterward for prompt-based frame development and image-to-video generation, not as a promised automatic panel cutter.
Should I upscale or recreate a small panel?
Upscale when the composition is sound and the remaining issue is size or softness. Recreate when anatomy, framing, identity, or product details need interpretation. Neither operation proves the accuracy of details missing from the source.
How do I remove storyboard text before animation?
Crop away captions outside the picture. If text overlaps the subject, repair or recreate the frame and inspect the affected region. Keep dialogue and production notes in the shot manifest rather than embedded in the image.
