Seedance

ByteDance’s Seedance models: cinematic motion, native sound, and control from frames or reference images.

Which one to use

All four take a prompt, a first and last frame, or up to 9 reference images, and make sound unless you set generate_audio to false.

Prompting

• Describe the motion, not just the scene: who moves, how, and what the camera does (“slow push in”, “handheld tracking shot”, “static wide shot”).
• Name the light and mood: “overcast morning”, “neon at night”, “golden hour backlight”.
• Keep one main action per clip. Long sequences come out better as several clips.
• For speech, put the line in quotes and say who says it: the barista says "One flat white, coming up".
• From a first frame, describe what happens next rather than what’s already in the picture.

Image-to-video

A first frame fixes the opening shot exactly; the video takes its shape unless you set aspect_ratio. Add a last frame to land on a specific image, for transitions and before-and-after shots.

Reference images

Up to 9 images of characters, products, places or a look. Refer to them in the prompt as @Image1, @Image2 and so on, in the order you sent them. The same references across several clips keep a character or product consistent.

Good to know

• Most of the wait (2 to 6 minutes) is queueing; a 480p clip takes about as long as a 720p one.
• Prompts that may show real people or protected characters can be declined (content_policy); declined videos are free.
• Videos are kept for 30 days; download the ones you want to keep.

Full API details: Video generation. Try it in the dashboard’s Playground, which shows the code for each video.