What the export window settled, and what a file keeps afterwards
Sora's help page dates the shutdown: the app in April 2026, the API that September, with exports offered for one final window before deletion. Its files were documented as carrying C2PA metadata on every asset and a visible moving watermark on downloads; detection tools stayed inside the company. Read beside it: Google Flow, with SynthID on every Veo video. As of 2026-10-13.
1Lines this register already holds
What the register holds on the layers a downloaded file can carry, how long each is claimed to last, and who can read one without asking the vendor.
- Visible markListed for general availability among the provenance tooling for the vendor's own products: a visible moving watermark on videos downloaded from sora.com or the Sora applisted as provenance tooling
- Machine-readable markingIn the same list: C2PA metadata on all assets, providing verifiable origin through an industry standardstandard named
- DetectionAlso in that list: internal detection tools to help assess whether a certain video or audio was created by the vendor's productsheld inside the vendor
- Paid tierNot documented on the vendor's public pages (as of 2026-09-22)the system card attaches no plan to the watermark
- RobustnessDesigned to stand up to cropping, added filters, changed frame rates and lossy compressionas stated by the vendor
- DurabilityThe user guide adds that such a check should indicate the file was generated unless the metadata has been removedthe vendor's own caveat
- MetadataThe guide tells publishers to keep whatever content credentials or generation metadata the tool writes, and warns that re-encoding can strip themdescribed but not enumerated
- DetectionVideos can be verified using the SynthID verification platforma named platform
2What the help page dates, and what it leaves to other pages
The page read for this name does one job with unusual precision: it dates the ending. The app was discontinued on 26 April 2026 and the API on 24 September 2026, export was offered at a stated address, and data is deleted after the final export window. A production reading that page in time knew exactly when its files had to leave.
What the page does not do is describe what those files carry. That statement lives elsewhere — the system card — and this register keeps the two apart. One document dates the product, another lists the provenance tooling, and a third would be needed to say what an ordinary edit does to a file afterwards. On a shutdown, that separation is the useful part: knowing when a download worked and knowing what came down with it are different questions with different answers.
3What a file from that window was documented as carrying
The system card's provenance list names three things for the vendor's own products and attaches no plan, tier or switch to any of them. C2PA metadata on all assets, described as verifiable origin through an industry standard. A visible moving watermark on videos downloaded from the site or the app. And detection tools to help assess whether a video or audio clip came from those products.
Two of the three deserve separating. The metadata is the layer anyone with a reader can act on, which is why the standard is named rather than the process. The watermark on downloads is the visible half, and moving is the load-bearing word: a fixed corner can be cropped with the corner, while a mark that travels has to be tracked across the frame to be removed cleanly. No size, path or duration is published, so the wording is recorded and the description stops where the document does.
4Which checking routes outlive the product
A mark and a way to check it are different things, and this register has been counting the second half. Three entries publish a route that does not depend on the product that wrote the mark. Amazon Nova Reel points to a public reader for its Content Credentials. Veo names a verification platform for SynthID. SynthID's own pages describe a check inside the vendor's assistant, plus a portal still in testing. The detection line in Sora's own row is the exception: described as internal, which leaves the strongest route in that document one an outside party cannot use.
Durability is the other half, and the two statements on this register come from different layers of a file. SynthID is designed to stand up to cropping, filters, changed frame rates and lossy compression. Content Credentials, by the vendor's own caveat, indicate generation unless the metadata has been removed. A re-encode through an ordinary editor is where that difference shows, and it is the step of the pipeline a production controls rather than the one a vendor does.
5The second name read on this page
The other row here is a product still running: Google Flow, built around Google's models with a free entry of fifty daily credits and paid tiers named on the page. Its relevance to a page about a shutdown is not that it is a replacement. It is the case where both halves of the mechanism are published: a signal written at generation, and a named platform where a file carrying it can be checked.
Set the two rows side by side and the difference is not a score. One product's pages date the end of its service and describe what its downloads carried; the other's are still being written, and this register's line on it will move when they change. A reader holding an archive of files is served better by that difference than by any ranking, and no ranking is something these pages carry.
6What each named tool's own pages state
| Named tool | What its own pages state about the product | Page read |
|---|---|---|
| Google Flow | Features vary by subscription tier, platform and region; 18+ | 2026-10-13 |
| SceneMixer | “You own the output — download finished episodes and publish to TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, or short-drama platforms.” | 2026-10-13 |
| Sora | App discontinued April 26, 2026; API discontinued September 24, 2026 | 2026-10-13 |
Inclusion rule. Tools this page is about, each read on its own public pages and dated in the last column. A maker's cell carries the wording of the page read; the pipeline's cell is one sentence quoted from its own guides. A point a page does not carry is printed as not stated rather than paraphrased from somewhere else. Order. Alphabetical by named tool.
7What the collected threads counted
The name was counted heavily in the material read, and the two lines quoted below are the question people asked around the ending.
| Name | Posts | Comment mentions | Positive | Negative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sora | 11729 | 4662 | 1112 | 452 |
Inclusion rule. Names carried in the collected material and read on this page. A post arguing with itself can be counted in the positive and the negative column both. Order. Descending by posts.
Sora is dead — what do creators do now?
r/SoraAi, collected 2026-10-14
Will you miss making Sora videos?
r/SoraAi, collected 2026-10-14
8When the named tool is the safer arrangement
- A named standard in the file outlives the product — C2PA metadata on all assets means a reader exists for anyone who kept a file, whatever later happens to the service that wrote it.
- A signal written at generation travels with the material — A watermark embedded when content is created is on everything a model produced, and its durability is stated in plain terms on the scheme's own pages.
- A dated window could actually be met — A shutdown and an export addressed with dates is everything a production needs to plan a last download, which is more than most retirements publish.
The search behind this page is "How can you tell if a video is AI-generated?", asked long after the product named here stopped generating. Read beside it: which tools document a mark and Higgsfield against Kling.