Seedance 2.5 (Text-to-Video) generates Hollywood-grade cinematic videos from text prompts with native audio-visual synchronization, director-level camera and lighting control, and exceptional motion stability. Built on Seed's unified multimodal architecture, it leads on instruction adherence, motion quality, and visual aesthetics.
Idle
$0.81per run·~12 / $10
ExamplesView all
A young woman prepares breakfast inside a quiet modern apartment early in the morning. She casually opens the curtains and freezes: an enormous silent spacecraft is hovering between the nearby skyscrapers. Her coffee cup slowly lowers from her hand as sunlight reflects from the ship across the room. The camera begins with an intimate domestic shot, follows her toward the window, then pulls behind her shoulder into a massive exterior reveal. Grounded science fiction, realistic scale, quiet awe, cinematic morning light.
5-second cinematic video. A rainy night street scene outside a small convenience store. The camera is positioned at sidewalk level, capturing a quiet empty street with reflections of neon lights on the wet pavement. A young man in a dark jacket suddenly runs into the frame, holding a mysterious old suitcase. He looks nervous and keeps checking behind him. He quickly places the suitcase near a wall and hides behind a street corner. A few seconds later, the suitcase suddenly starts shaking slightly. The man slowly approaches it, confused and frightened. He carefully opens the suitcase, and a bright warm light shines from inside, illuminating his surprised face. Realistic urban environment, cinematic night lighting, handheld camera movement, natural human acting, rain droplets, realistic reflections, dramatic atmosphere, 35mm film look, ultra realistic, immersive storytelling.
A stylish young woman in a red coat walks through an underground parking garage and unlocks a sleek black car. She opens the driver door, then freezes when she sees a leather briefcase already sitting on the passenger seat. A phone inside the briefcase begins ringing. She slowly looks around the empty garage without entering the car. The camera follows behind her, moves into a close-up of the briefcase, then gently circles toward her face. Modern crime thriller, cold industrial light, polished reflections, slow controlled suspense.
Related Models
README
Seedance 2.5 Text-to-Video
Seedance 2.5 Text-to-Video generates cinematic videos from text prompts with native audio, strong motion stability, and director-style control over camera movement, lighting, mood, subject action, and scene progression. It also supports optional reference images, videos, and audio for stronger visual, motion, or soundtrack guidance.
Why Choose This?
-
Text-to-video generation
Generate cinematic videos directly from natural-language prompts. -
Native audio generation
Generate synchronized audio together with the video in a single workflow. -
Director-style prompt control
Control camera movement, lighting, shadows, character performance, atmosphere, and visual style through prompts. -
Reference-guided generation
Use reference images, videos, or audio to guide style, characters, composition, motion, or soundtrack direction. -
Flexible output settings
Choose aspect ratio, duration, resolution, and audio generation settings for different creative workflows. -
High-resolution output
Generate videos in480p,720p,1080p, or4k.
Parameters
| Parameter | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| prompt | Yes | Detailed description of the cinematic scene, action, camera movement, lighting, and mood. |
| aspect_ratio | No | Output aspect ratio: 16:9, 9:16, 4:3, 3:4, 1:1, or 21:9. Default: 16:9. |
| duration | No | Video length in seconds. Range: 4–30. Default: 5. |
| resolution | No | Output resolution: 480p, 720p, 1080p, or 4k. Default: 720p. |
| generate_audio | No | Generate synchronized audio for the output video. Default: true. |
| reference_images | No | Reference image URLs to guide style, characters, or composition. |
| reference_videos | No | Reference video URLs (up to 10). Each reference video is normalized to at least 2 seconds, each clip and the combined input are capped at 30 seconds, and the normalized combined input duration is rounded up to a whole second for billing. |
| reference_audios | No | Reference audio URLs to guide soundtrack, ambience, or audio style. Total reference audio length must not exceed 30 seconds. |
How to Use
- Write your prompt — Describe the scene with cinematic detail, including subject, action, lighting, mood, camera movement, and style.
- Choose aspect ratio — Use
16:9for widescreen,9:16for vertical content, or another supported layout. - Set duration — Choose a video length from
4to30seconds. - Choose resolution — Select
480p,720p,1080p, or4k. - Add references optional — Use reference images for style or character guidance, reference videos for motion guidance, and reference audio for soundtrack direction.
- Configure audio optional — Keep
generate_audioenabled when synchronized audio is needed. - Submit — Generate the final video and retrieve the output URL.
Writing Effective Prompts
Most weak results come from thin prompts. Seedance reads a prompt like a shot list — the more you direct it, the more it delivers. Structure your prompt in three layers.
1. One-sentence summary
Open with a single line that fixes the essentials:
subject + setting + action + style + camera
A lone astronaut walks across a red desert at dusk, cinematic sci-fi, slow low-angle tracking shot.
2. Shot-by-shot timeline
For anything with a beginning, middle, and end, break the duration into timed segments (1-second granularity). Keep the timeline continuous — no gaps.
0-3s: The astronaut crests a dune, silhouetted against the setting sun. Slow push-in. 3-7s: They stop, turn to face the camera, and raise a hand to shield their eyes. Wind lifts red dust across the frame. 7-10s: Wide pull-back reveals a half-buried spaceship behind them. Warm rim light, long shadows.
Give each range enough to do but not too much — cramming a dozen actions into three seconds causes cuts or dropped beats.
3. Consistency notes
End with anything that should hold across the whole clip: camera style, lighting, color palette, atmosphere, audio.
Handheld feel throughout, shallow depth of field, warm golden-hour palette. Ambient wind and footsteps only — no music.
Camera language
Write these directly; the model understands them:
- Shot size — extreme wide, wide, medium, medium close-up, close-up
- Movement — push in, pull out, pan, track, follow, orbit, tilt up, handheld shake
- Angle — low angle, overhead, eye-level, first-person
- Techniques — one-shot / long take, dolly zoom, bullet time, speed ramp
For a niche term, add a plain-language gloss: "rack focus: the sharp foreground softens as the background comes into focus."
Referencing uploaded assets
When you attach images, videos, or audio, bind each one explicitly in the prompt by its upload order — @image1, @video1, @audio1 — and say what it's for. Don't rely on labels drawn inside the image itself.
- "The knight in @image1 walks through the castle in @image2."
- "Refer to @video1 for the camera movement only; keep its shot order."
- "@image1 and @image2 are Character 1, voiced by @audio1."
When a reference is already accurate, just point to it — no need to re-describe it in detail.
Negative control
Positive descriptions work best, but you can suppress subtitles and audio:
- "No subtitles."
- "No BGM — ambient and action sounds only."
- "No audio."
Weak vs. strong
| prompt | |
|---|---|
| weak | a cat playing |
| strong | A ginger cat pounces on a ball of yarn on a sunlit wooden floor. 0-2s: it crouches, tail flicking, eyes locked on the yarn. 2-5s: it springs forward and bats the yarn across the floor, then chases it out of frame. Low eye-level shot, slight handheld follow, warm afternoon light, shallow depth of field. Playful mood, soft ambient room tone, no music. |
Pricing
Without reference videos
Output-only pricing:
| Resolution | Per second | 5 seconds | 10 seconds | 15 seconds | 30 seconds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 480p | $0.18 | $0.90 | $1.80 | $2.70 | $5.40 |
| 720p | $0.36 | $1.80 | $3.60 | $5.40 | $10.80 |
| 1080p | $0.90 | $4.50 | $9.00 | $13.50 | $27.00 |
| 4k | $1.80 | $9.00 | $18.00 | $27.00 | $54.00 |
Prices scale linearly with output duration from 4 to 30 seconds.
With reference videos
Normalized reference-video duration and output duration use the same per-second rate:
| Resolution | Per second |
|---|---|
| 480p | $0.11 |
| 720p | $0.22 |
| 1080p | $0.55 |
| 4k | $1.10 |
Each reference video is normalized to at least 2 seconds, each clip and the combined input are capped at 30 seconds, and the normalized combined input duration is rounded up to a whole second for billing.
Example: 5 seconds of normalized reference input plus 5 seconds of output costs $1.10 at 480p, $2.20 at 720p, $5.50 at 1080p, or $11.00 at 4k.
Best Use Cases
- Cinematic video generation — Create polished video scenes from detailed text prompts.
- Commercials and ads — Generate high-quality promotional clips, product scenes, and campaign visuals.
- Social media content — Produce vertical, square, landscape, or ultra-wide short-form videos.
- Concept visualization — Turn creative ideas into motion previews for pitching, planning, and storyboarding.
- Reference-guided generation — Use images, videos, or audio to guide style, motion, characters, or soundtrack direction.
- Music and audio-driven scenes — Generate clips with synchronized sound for music, ambience, or narrative moments.
Pro Tips
- Write prompts like a film director, including subject, action, camera angle, lighting, atmosphere, and mood.
- Use
16:9for cinematic widescreen and9:16for vertical social content. - Include specific visual details such as lighting direction, color palette, environment, and camera movement.
- Use reference images when character, product, or style consistency matters.
- Use reference videos when motion, pacing, camera movement, or scene structure matters.
- Use reference audio when soundtrack, ambience, or voice style matters.
- Start with shorter durations for prompt testing, then increase duration once the direction is confirmed.
- Use asset tags such as
@image1,@image2, and@audio1to reference uploaded assets in the prompt. - Reference video duration is rounded up, with a minimum of 2 seconds and a maximum of 30 seconds.
Related Models
- Seedance 2.5 Image-to-Video — Generate video from a start image and prompt.
- Seedance 2.5 Video Edit — Edit an existing video with a prompt.
- Seedance 2.5 Video Extend — Extend an existing video with a new generated segment.
- Seedance 2.0 Text-to-Video — Previous-generation Seedance text-to-video model.
Seedance 2.5 Text To Video API — Quick start
Grab a WaveSpeedAI API key, then call POST https://api.wavespeed.ai/api/v3/bytedance/seedance-2.5/text-to-video with your input as JSON. The endpoint returns a prediction id. Start polling the result endpoint around every 2 seconds, increase the interval for long-running tasks, and stop on any terminal status. On completed, read output values from data.outputs. Examples for Seedance 2.5 Text To Video below.
HTTP example
set -euo pipefail
: "${WAVESPEED_API_KEY:?Set WAVESPEED_API_KEY}"
REQUEST_BODY=$(cat <<'JSON'
{
"prompt": "A cinematic shot of a city at sunset, soft golden light",
"aspect_ratio": "16:9",
"resolution": "720p",
"duration": 5,
"generate_audio": true
}
JSON
)
# 1. Submit the prediction.
SUBMIT_RESPONSE=$(curl --silent --show-error --fail-with-body \
-X POST "https://api.wavespeed.ai/api/v3/bytedance/seedance-2.5/text-to-video" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $WAVESPEED_API_KEY" \
-d "$REQUEST_BODY")
TASK=$(printf '%s' "$SUBMIT_RESPONSE" | jq 'if has("data") then .data else . end')
PREDICTION_ID=$(printf '%s' "$TASK" | jq -r '.id')
if [ -z "$PREDICTION_ID" ] || [ "$PREDICTION_ID" = "null" ]; then
printf 'Submission response did not contain a prediction id
' >&2
exit 1
fi
RESULT_URL="https://api.wavespeed.ai/api/v3/predictions/$PREDICTION_ID/result"
# 2. Poll until the prediction finishes.
while true; do
RESPONSE=$(curl --silent --show-error --fail-with-body "$RESULT_URL" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $WAVESPEED_API_KEY")
RESULT=$(printf '%s' "$RESPONSE" | jq 'if has("data") then .data else . end')
STATUS=$(printf '%s' "$RESULT" | jq -r '.status')
case "$STATUS" in
completed) printf '%s\n' "$RESULT" | jq '.outputs'; break ;;
failed|cancelled|timeout|deleted) printf '%s\n' "$RESULT" | jq . >&2; exit 1 ;;
*) sleep 2 ;;
esac
doneNode.js example
const submitUrl = "https://api.wavespeed.ai/api/v3/bytedance/seedance-2.5/text-to-video";
const apiKey = process.env.WAVESPEED_API_KEY;
if (!apiKey) throw new Error('Set WAVESPEED_API_KEY');
async function requestJson(url, options = {}) {
const response = await fetch(url, options);
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(await response.text());
return response.json();
}
// 1. Submit the prediction.
const body = await requestJson(submitUrl, {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${apiKey}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json",
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"prompt": "A cinematic shot of a city at sunset, soft golden light",
"aspect_ratio": "16:9",
"resolution": "720p",
"duration": 5,
"generate_audio": true
}),
});
const task = body.data ?? body;
if (!task.id) throw new Error("Submission response did not contain a prediction id");
const resultUrl = `https://api.wavespeed.ai/api/v3/predictions/${task.id}/result`;
// 2. Poll until the prediction finishes.
while (true) {
const resultBody = await requestJson(resultUrl, {
headers: { "Authorization": `Bearer ${apiKey}` },
});
const result = resultBody.data ?? resultBody;
if (result.status === "completed") {
console.log(result.outputs);
break;
}
if (["failed", "cancelled", "timeout", "deleted"].includes(result.status)) throw new Error(JSON.stringify(result));
await new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, 2000));
}Python example
import json
import os
import time
from urllib.request import Request, urlopen
api_key = os.environ["WAVESPEED_API_KEY"]
headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {api_key}", "Content-Type": "application/json"}
payload = {
"prompt": "A cinematic shot of a city at sunset, soft golden light",
"aspect_ratio": "16:9",
"resolution": "720p",
"duration": 5,
"generate_audio": True
}
def request_json(url, data=None):
request = Request(url, data=data, headers=headers, method="POST" if data else "GET")
with urlopen(request) as response:
return json.load(response)
# 1. Submit the prediction.
body = request_json("https://api.wavespeed.ai/api/v3/bytedance/seedance-2.5/text-to-video", json.dumps(payload).encode())
task = body.get("data", body)
if not task.get("id"):
raise RuntimeError("Submission response did not contain a prediction id")
result_url = f"https://api.wavespeed.ai/api/v3/predictions/{task['id']}/result"
# 2. Poll until the prediction finishes.
while True:
result_body = request_json(result_url)
result = result_body.get("data", result_body)
status = result.get("status")
if status == "completed":
print(result.get("outputs", []))
break
if status in {"failed", "cancelled", "timeout", "deleted"}:
raise RuntimeError(result)
time.sleep(2)Seedance 2.5 Text To Video API — Frequently asked questions
What is the Seedance 2.5 Text To Video API?
Seedance 2.5 Text To Video is a ByteDance model for video generation, exposed as a REST API on WaveSpeedAI. Seedance 2.5 (Text-to-Video) generates Hollywood-grade cinematic videos from text prompts with native audio-visual synchronization, director-level camera and lighting control, and exceptional motion stability. Built on Seed's unified multimodal architecture, it leads on instruction adherence, motion quality, and visual aesthetics. You can call it programmatically or try it from the playground above.
How do I call the Seedance 2.5 Text To Video API?
POST your input parameters to the model's REST endpoint (shown in the API tab of this playground) with your WaveSpeedAI API key in the Authorization header. Submission returns a prediction ID. Poll the result endpoint starting around every 2 seconds, increase the interval for long-running tasks, and stop on any terminal status. The playground generates Python, JavaScript, and cURL examples for submitting requests and polling results. Full request/response shape is documented at https://wavespeed.ai/docs/docs-api/bytedance/bytedance-seedance-2.5-text-to-video.
How much does Seedance 2.5 Text To Video cost per run?
Seedance 2.5 Text To Video starts at $0.81 per run. That figure is the base price — the final charge scales with the parameters you set in the form (output size, length, count, references, or whatever knobs this model exposes), so a higher-quality or larger output costs more than a minimal one. The exact cost for your current input is shown live next to the Generate button before you submit, and the actual per-call charge is recorded on the prediction afterwards.
What inputs does Seedance 2.5 Text To Video accept?
Key inputs: `prompt`, `aspect_ratio`, `resolution`, `duration`, `reference_images`, `generate_audio`. The full JSON schema (types, defaults, allowed values) is rendered above the Generate button and mirrored in the API reference at https://wavespeed.ai/docs/docs-api/bytedance/bytedance-seedance-2.5-text-to-video.
How long does Seedance 2.5 Text To Video take to generate?
Reported generation time on WaveSpeedAI is around 279 seconds per request. This is an estimate, not a latency guarantee; queue time and input settings can change the total wait. live status is visible in the prediction record.
Can I use Seedance 2.5 Text To Video outputs commercially?
Commercial usage rights depend on the model's license, set by its provider (ByteDance). Check the provider's applicable terms and WaveSpeedAI's Terms of Service before commercial use.