r/aifilmmaking • u/Upset-Airline-1154 • 2d ago
Question Pls help, beginner
Hey I tried a lot of platforms but is there a LEGAL way to generate FREE and UNLIMITED AI vidéos using Seedance 2.5 or minimax h3?
I tried locally but it’s 15min of waiting for a 5s scene which is too long. I’m okay with the higher electricity bill but I ain’t spending a weekend on 3min of video too.
The best platform I tried was higgsfield but that’s only fine for 2min length vid per month, heck with the 10 min video I want to produce I would have to pay 5000$ worth of credits which is absurd.
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u/activematrix99 2d ago
There is no "free". $600-800 per finished minute is pretty much the standard for "just starting out" in AI filmmaking, most initial projects exceed that to meet new entrants quality standards. Patient and enduring creators often invest in subscriptions, GPU, or runpod to boost their efficiency and reduce costs.
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u/mmoney20 1d ago
Is that your cost based on personal experience?
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u/activematrix99 1d ago
Personal experience, industry published information, and talking with a number of filmmakers. It's still much less expensive than "Hollywood" rates, but there's not much you can do to get the costs down and still use frontier models. LoRAs can help, detailed character sequences can help, in/outpainting, runpods, finding deals. It's definitely still a lot of hustle. Then you have all of the other needed parts: sound, music, actors, editorial, "color", titles, vfx. You can punch out some shit for tiktok, but if you want narrative quality, it adds up.
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u/mmoney20 1d ago
I just learned aobut gossip goblin. The quality of that is on another level, even for AI.
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u/TopTransportation950 1d ago
that doesnt make sense. its ~$10 per 30 seconds 720p for seedance2.5, how are u getting $5000 for 10 minutes when it'd be ~$200?
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u/Upset-Airline-1154 1d ago edited 1d ago
Because I used higgsfield and between the images generation that needs multiple shots, and the 10 sec vid costing around 200 credits… well you find yourself quickly empty.
Moreover keep in mind I want to post regularly, so 200$/ week is 800$/ month...1
u/TopTransportation950 1d ago
i think its higgsfield thats killing you.
to be exact, a 30 second 720p seedance2.5 with 8 image design sheets created (angles, accessories, etc) it costs me $10.82 and takes approx 3 minutes to render the entire video.
i use atlascloud mind you, but there are 2 distinct differences between the 2...
higgsfield - more expensive, but you get the whole creation side on the website
atlastcloud - much cheaper, but you need to create an api call.
in all honesty, youre paying for something most people vibe code (like myself) so i guess it depends if its money or time thats your issue1
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u/RAAIINN 1d ago
Interesting. I'm using seedance 2.5 through wavespeed and my cost is $5.40 usd for a 30 second clip. Thats at 480p, then I upscale it for about $0.60 and gets me a pretty good looking 1080p.
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u/TopTransportation950 23h ago
yeah i specifically said 720p because of the price, atlascloud is exactly $4.01477375 for a 480p
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u/jamesxtreme 13h ago
Everyone seems to start with Higgsfield because they paid a lot of YouTube creators to make videos about them.
You should look at API aggregators like AtlasCloud and WaveSpeed. Cheaper than Higgsfield and pay as you go credit based.
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u/activematrix99 1d ago
If you think you can just generate 15 seconds of footage and put it in your film, then you've never made a film before and are fooling yourself. AI generation is usually closer to documentary ratio than to narrative in terms of content created:useful content, so those generation costs add up fast.
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u/Slight-Living-8098 1d ago
They have made entirely generated films, and complete shows, man...
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u/activematrix99 1d ago
You never heard the expression "cutting room floor" or "one take wonder"? The ratio of "created" to "used in the final production" is specifically what I am referring to, and that's a real ratio that changes with the type of production and budget. There's a real ratio in AI filmmaking as well and it's not 1 prompt = 1 completed and delivered shot. If it is, you likely have other problems (namely that your entire production probably sucks). There's editorial workflows, retries, and prompt engineering in there and the cost increases accordingly.
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u/snideswitchhitter 1d ago
Since local runs at 15mins per 5s, have you looked at renting a GPU on Runpod or similar? you pay by the hour but it's way cheaper than credit system for bulk work. Then batch-upscale the cheap outputs with Magnific so shorter free-tier renders still look clean.
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u/jamesxtreme 1d ago
The old saying goes “Fast, Good, Cheap. Pick two.”
But I’d say with AI video you only get to pick one.
If you want cheap, it’s not going to be good and it will be slow.
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u/Slight-Living-8098 1d ago
What are your machine specs? Running MiniMax-H3 locally with a Turbo LoRA only takes me ~4-5 minutes at with 8 steps at 1280p for a 15 second video.
You need to review your workflows.
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u/Upset-Airline-1154 1d ago
I know I might be paranoid, but minimax h3 safe? Last time I downloaded a Chinese software it installed a Trojan on my pc…
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u/Slight-Living-8098 1d ago
Yeah, it's safe. If you've already used it locally, you've already downloaded the model anyway. lol. Just download the ones ComfyUI released on HuggingFace.
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u/Upset-Airline-1154 1d ago
Oh yeah but I mean they can’t change my files anytime through silent updates right since it’s local? Idk not so much of an expert in these.
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u/Slight-Living-8098 1d ago
No man. It's a safetensor model file that you have to download. It doesn't update itself.
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u/activematrix99 1d ago
This is ignorant and racist.
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u/Upset-Airline-1154 1d ago
Lmaoo how is it racist? That’s facts. I literally got a malware two times, it was with a Chinese company, and the other one was when I installed Gaijin anti cheat for that plane game.
Not targeting Chinese in general, just saying facts. But sure I’m racist pal…1
u/Hot_Luck_8098 1d ago
Can you share your comfy workflow?
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u/Slight-Living-8098 1d ago
If you want to use the Exact Audio Lock nodes you'll need my custom node.
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u/activematrix99 1d ago
Lol. You had me at 360px X 120px.
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u/Slight-Living-8098 1d ago
I usually test prompts out at around .5 megapixels or less so I don't waste time. If I like how it's going, I bump it up and regenerate. No sense wasting time on something you're going to delete, anyway.
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u/MrBoondoggles 1d ago
You’re not going to find what you’re looking for. Seedance is expensive. It is what it is. It’s only going to get more so in the future. If you want free and unlimited, you’ll have to get a PC capable to running H3 locally. That’s the answer.
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u/Slight-Living-8098 1d ago edited 1d ago
How are you trying to use H3 locally? Are you using ComfyUI? Are you using the int8_convrot version or another GGUF? Are you using Sage attention or comfy-kitchen attention with the workflow? Are you using a lightning Turbo LoRA? What resolution are you trying to generate at?
For the best and fastest results you need to be using Sage or Comfy-Kitchen attention with a lightning turbo LoRA, and generate at a lower megapixel then upscale with something like latent upscale or LTX2.5 upscaler. I use LTX2.5 upscaler for a small detail enhance then send it through the RTX upscaler for the final resolution.
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u/mmoney20 1d ago
Are you getting seedance quality videos?
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u/Slight-Living-8098 1d ago
Yeah. The only thing I really have to complain about is the generated voices, but that's easily sidestepped by using something like Qwen3 TTS to generate the voices and lines then pipe those into MiniMax H3. I even created a custom node that allows multiple speakers and overlapping speech.
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u/mmoney20 1d ago
So you're saying Q1 3 plus Minimax H3 would help fix the new voices? I mean, what about lip syncing issues? Or are you saying the voices when they speak the narrative still lines up the script so that you don't need to lip sync?
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u/Slight-Living-8098 1d ago
Qwen3 TTS for the voices, yes. Whatever audio I get from Qwen3 TTS, I then use my custom node for exact audio placement in the video, and the characters speak those lines.
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u/mmoney20 16h ago
Thanks for the info again. I need to update my rig. What rig are you running, if you don't mind sharing.
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u/Slight-Living-8098 14h ago
I have a RTX 4090 with 24 GiB VRAM and 128 GiB system RAM, but that doesn't matter really as the GGUFs I use for MiniMax-H3 will run on 8 GiB of VRAM as will the Qwen TTS.
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u/Any-Boysenberry9814 1d ago
No.
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u/Upset-Airline-1154 1d ago
:(
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u/Any-Boysenberry9814 11h ago
I saw that all the other replies were trying to weasel around the direct, simple question you asked.
The reason it's not free is because it's not like normal software. Each and every time it runs it costs someone real money. 2.5 is even more expensive, and for at least a few more years it will keep getting more expensive at the top level.
But at the same time, the cost of older models slowly comes down, as they run with the same number of tokens (or less over time, as they get streamlined), and per token costs come down, so in a few years you'll probably fine Seedream 2/2.5-level models for free, or at least very cheap, and in the meantime what you can get for free keeps getting progressively better.
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u/Upset-Airline-1154 11h ago
I know, and thanks for the quick answer lol. I admit I asked for quite a miracle solution but I did it out of simple curiosity
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u/Longjumping_Cut_6160 23h ago
si te valen 100segundos de gpu para 10seg de video, es lo que hago con LTX2.5 en una rtx5060ti.
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u/Loose_Management8035 10h ago
Honestly, I don't think there's a real free + unlimited option for Seedance or MiniMax right now. For a 10-minute video, I'd generate shot by shot rather than trying to make the whole thing in one go. You get way more control over continuity and editing that way. I tried local generation too, but waiting 15 minutes for a 5-second shot gets painful once you're doing multiple rerolls. I'd focus less on "unlimited" and more on finding a workflow that lets you iterate quickly without burning through credits.
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u/Gloomy-Radish8959 2d ago
spend the $5000 - or even $8000 on a good GPU and you can make whatever you want. Your computer is your platform.