Utter Chaos

My question is: why isn’t Firefly working consistently?

I’ve been working with a client who creates animated children’s content—something in a Pixar-style. During a recent session (around 11am to 5:30pm UK time), we followed our usual workflow: creating a start and end image, then generating short video clips to link them together.

This was our second session this week and roughly our sixth overall. I currently pay £28.99 per month for 7,000 credits, and across the last two sessions we’ve used around 8,000 out of 11,000 purchased credits.

Previously, my client was comfortable spending around 400 credits for an 8-second video, even before the free trial period. While there was a learning curve, we were getting solid results. However, since the free trial, Firefly has become increasingly unreliable—frequent breakdowns, inconsistent output, and noticeably poorer quality. It’s now worse than ever.

For example, we might successfully generate two or three decent 5-second videos using the Firefly video (16:9) model, and then it suddenly stops working for no clear reason. We then switch between different models (Veo3.1, Ray3.14, etc.), but results vary wildly. Sometimes we end up spending 500 credits, then 400, then 80—just trying to get something usable. This trial-and-error process is time-consuming and frustrating.

Honestly, if we had known it would be like this, we wouldn’t have continued—but we’re close to finishing, so we’ll push through.

There are multiple issues, not just one—it’s difficult to even summarise them all. The biggest concern is that all of this inconsistency is costing credits, which ultimately means more money.

On top of that, if I need additional credits, the only option seems to be purchasing another subscription, which doesn’t make sense. I’d much prefer a system where I can maintain a single subscription and buy extra credits as needed.

Once this project is complete, I’ll be cancelling. It’s disappointing, because the experience had real potential—but overall, it hasn’t been good.