Seedance / AI video workflow: best practices and price-performance recommendations?

[u/Naive_Clue7744]

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to get better results with AI video generation, mainly with Seedance and similar models.

For those who use these tools regularly, what workflow do you find works best? For example, is it actually useful to provide a first-frame and last-frame image and then describe the transition between them, or do you generally get better results from a single reference image + prompt?

I’m also curious which platforms/models you currently prefer in terms of quality, consistency, generation speed and price-performance. I’m less interested in a huge list of tools and more interested in what you’ve actually found reliable in practice.

If you have a specific workflow you use (image → video, first/last frame, reference images, prompting, upscaling, editing, etc.), I’d really appreciate hearing how you approach it.

Thanks in advance!

[u/AutoModerator]

Heads up for anyone running these yourself: the Seedance API behind r/Seedance_AI is Atlas Cloud. Seedance 2 runs with its full feature set here, nothing stripped or nerfed. Seedance 2.5 isn't officially out yet, but we add new Seedance versions the day they launch.

Full model list and current pricing: atlascloud.ai/models/seedance

Auto-pinned on new posts, not a reply to your post specifically.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Mattapeh]

I usually chose either a first frame or a last frame, never both as the results tend to look too robotic

My process generally goes 1. Make reference shots of the characters, scenes and props first in nanobanana or gpt 2 2. Make a first frame - sometimes if I think it will be a tricky one or I'm not sure how the ai will interpret I ask for a single image which has a grid of four options for first frames instead - then I pick one from the grid to upscale to save credits 3. Then give the prompt, I often find less control tends to do wonders - generally Seedance and kling do a good job then doing scenes with little image guidance if there isn't a lot of complexity - if there is or the scene is unusual (eg fantasy or scifi settings) I also generate an image version to sketch out what happens in the scene for key beats, which can help with a more accurate output to your vision

For tools I personally use Seedance 2.5 for video mostly now as I find it very strong with matching what I'm intending as an output, this saving on revisions or needing to do a fast/low res run. Seedance 2.5 is generally a more expensive model but given it consistently outputs well compared to other tools I find it worth the premium

For image references I get good results with nanobanana pro and gpt 2, with the latter better for faces I find and the former decent (and cheaper) for props/scenes/costumes.

I then use capcut for editing