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Troubleshoot AI Autofill
An Autofill run keeps track of itself. It knows which shots have been written and which have not, it survives navigating away and restarting the app, and it tells a pause apart from a finish. So the first move is almost never to start again — it is to read what the card says.
Check the Autofill card
| The card says | What it means | Do this |
|---|---|---|
| Tagging shot N of M | It is working through your shots | Nothing. Move around the app freely; the run continues |
| Paused — StoryFolder is busy. Resuming in m:ss | StoryFolder asked this run to slow down | Let the countdown run out. It resumes itself |
| Paused — waiting for a connection | Your computer is offline | Reconnect, then Resume now |
| Tagged N shots | Everything asked for was settled | Review, then Dismiss |
| Tagged N of M shots. K could not be tagged. | Partly done, and it stopped trying on those K | Review what landed, then Retry K shots |
| A failure sentence | The run hit something terminal | Read the sentence and the section for it below |
A run you cancel yourself draws no card. It stopped because you asked it to.
The Autofill action does not appear
Autofill with AI… appears in the inspector only when there is something for it to fill.
- No field has Autofill switched on. Open Preferences → Notes & Metadata → Shot Metadata and turn on the switch for at least one field. This is the usual answer.
- You are looking at a video, not a shot. Autofill is a shot metadata feature. The Video Metadata pane carries no Autofill control at all, by design — see Video metadata.
- The plan does not include it. AI Autofill is a Pro feature. Opening it without Pro shows an upgrade prompt rather than an empty dialog.
The run is waiting
StoryFolder is busy
StoryFolder asked this run to slow down, and it stepped back. The card shows a countdown, and the run restarts itself when the countdown ends.
Wait it out. Resuming early only re-trips the limit it is backing away from, which is why the card offers no resume button in this state.
Do not start a second run over the same shots. You would be paying for the same work twice and racing two jobs at one board.
Your computer is offline
Autofill needs a connection for every run — this is the cloud half of StoryFolder, unlike transcription, which runs on your machine once its model has downloaded.
Reconnect, then use Resume now on the card. Nothing already written is lost while it waits.
The run completed with errors
Tagged 62 of 126 shots. 64 could not be tagged. is a real, finished outcome — not a crash, and not a total failure. Sixty-two shots are genuinely written.
- Review the values that did land, the same way you would review any run.
- Click Retry N shots on the card. The retry is a new run covering only the shots that failed, linked back to the one that produced them.
- Leave Only fill empty fields on for that retry, so a successful value from the first pass is never replaced by a second attempt.
If the retry fails the same way, stop retrying and read the results are consistently wrong — a run that cannot answer for a set of shots is usually being asked the wrong question about them.
Some fields stayed empty
An empty cell after a run has several honest explanations:
- The field already had a value, and Only fill empty fields protected it — the intended behaviour.
- The answer did not fit the field. A value outside a dropdown's options, or outside a rating's range, is dropped rather than forced in. Nothing is written, and nothing is announced.
- The frame did not carry the answer. One frame per shot is all Autofill sees.
- The question was ambiguous. A field called Type with no description can mean six things; so can a run instruction that assumes context the model does not have.
The first is a setting. The rest are usually fixed by a better field description, or by a field type with a fixed set of answers.
The results are consistently wrong
Stop widening the run — every extra shot is another value to correct.
- Rename the field to say what it actually wants, and rewrite its description to name a good answer.
- Where the answer has a fixed set of possibilities, use a Dropdown, Checkbox, Rating or Number field rather than Text. A constrained field cannot invent an answer.
- Re-run on a small, varied sample — not the easiest ten shots.
- Read that sample before touching the rest of the board.
If the fact simply is not in the frame — a client, a job number, a release status — no description will fix it. Type it once as video metadata, or paste it across the shots that share it.
Sign-in or plan errors
The card names these and offers the one control that fixes them.
- Sign in — your account could not be verified. Signing back in and starting a fresh run is the whole fix. See Sign in & sign out.
- See plans — Autofill is not included in your current plan. See Compare plans.
Neither is a temporary wait: a run that paused because StoryFolder was busy resumes itself, while a run stopped for sign-in or plan reasons stays stopped until you act.
A run looks stuck after restarting StoryFolder
Runs are built to survive a restart: StoryFolder remembers where one had got to and picks it up again when it reopens.
Give it a moment after launch, then reopen the project. If the card still shows no movement:
- Write down the exact message on the card, how many shots failed, and which project it belongs to — before you retry or dismiss anything.
- Retry or resume, whichever the card offers.
- If nothing changes, send us your logs and contact support with what you wrote down.
Dismissing a card clears it away for good. Do that after you have written the error down, not before.
Before you retry
- Check what already landed. A retry over shots that are already correct is wasted work.
- Keep Only fill empty fields on, unless replacing values is exactly what you mean to do.
- Narrow the run to the shots that failed or are still empty.
- Keep the failed run's card until you have read its error.
What to include when you contact support
- Your StoryFolder version and operating system.
- The project's title — not the footage itself.
- What the card said, including the number of shots that failed.
- Whether retrying or resuming changed anything.
- Your logs.