Thirty seconds of continuous video from a single prompt, with native audio and reference sets up to fifty files deep. Here is what changed, what it costs, and how to actually use it.
By Fauxto Labs•14 min read•Updated August 2026
Hero — 30s single take
A single continuous 30-second shot at golden hour: the camera starts tight on a barista’s hands pulling an espresso shot, pulls back through a bustling corner cafe as steam catches the light, glides out the open door onto a rain-slicked street, then rises to reveal the full city block coming to life. Warm amber interior grading into cool blue street tones. Natural ambient audio throughout — grinder, chatter, door chime, traffic.
Max duration
30 seconds
Native audio
On by default
Reference files
30 img / 10 vid / 10 audio
Resolution
480p or 720p
What Is Seedance 2.5?
Seedance 2.5 is ByteDance's newest video generation model, and the headline change is duration: it produces up to 30 seconds of video in a single generation, double what Seedance 2.0 allowed. It runs in three modes — text-to-video, image-to-video and reference-to-video — generates synchronized audio natively, and accepts reference sets of up to 30 images, 10 videos and 10 audio files at once.
That duration jump sounds incremental and is not. Almost every AI video workflow in production today is really a stitching workflow: generate five seconds, generate another five, hope the character's face and the lighting survive the cut, assemble in an editor. Seedance 2.5 removes the seams for anything under half a minute. One generation, one continuous take, one consistent audio bed. The practical difference is not that you save editing time — it is that a class of shot that was previously impossible becomes routine.
The trade-off is resolution. Seedance 2.5 outputs 480p or 720p, with no 1080p tier from the provider. If you need a higher-resolution master, the workflow is to generate at 720p and run the result through our video upscaler, which is usually cheaper than paying a premium model's per-second rate for the same length.
Showcase Gallery
Every clip below was generated with Seedance 2.5. Click any of them to read the full prompt and send it straight to the generator.
Long-form product spot
A 30-second continuous product film: matte-black wireless headphones rotate slowly on a rotating obsidian plinth as studio lights sweep across them, then the camera pushes in through the ear cup into an abstract interior of glowing acoustic chambers, before pulling back out to a hero shot on a seamless white void. Precise, deliberate motion. Low synth hum rising to a single resolving chord.
One-take establishing shot
A 24-second unbroken crane shot descending through morning fog into a Japanese mountain village: tiled rooftops emerge, a cyclist crosses a stone bridge, shopkeepers roll up shutters, and the shot settles at street level following a child running toward school. Muted greens and greys, soft diffused light, birdsong and distant temple bell.
Continuous process demo
A 30-second overhead-to-eye-level continuous shot of a chef assembling a layered dessert: crumb base pressed into a ring mould, cream piped in a slow spiral, berries placed one at a time, torch caramelising the top, then the ring lifted away as the camera drops to a hero angle. Crisp foley for every action, no music.
Character consistency across beats
A 28-second shot following the same woman in a red wool coat through four locations without a visible cut: out of a subway stairwell, across a crowded plaza, into a glass lobby, and up an escalator, her face and wardrobe identical throughout as the light shifts from underground sodium to overcast daylight to cool interior.
Physics-heavy action
A 20-second continuous tracking shot alongside a rally car sliding through a forest hairpin: gravel sprays in believable arcs, suspension compresses over ruts, dust plumes drift into the trees behind, and the camera whips ahead to catch the car launching over a crest. Engine load and gravel impacts fully synchronised.
Slow atmospheric build
A 30-second slow push through an abandoned greenhouse at dusk: cracked panes, ferns overtaking iron benches, dust suspended in shafts of failing light, condensation beading and running down glass. Almost no camera movement for the first ten seconds, then an imperceptible drift forward. Wind, creaking metal, distant thunder.
Dialogue with native audio
A 22-second two-shot in a diner booth at night: two friends mid-conversation, one leaning forward to make a point, the other laughing and looking away. Natural overlapping dialogue with room tone, cutlery, and a jukebox low in the mix. Handheld with subtle breathing motion, warm tungsten practicals.
Reference-driven scene
A 26-second shot built from a reference set: the same architectural interior, the same model, and the same colour grade carried from attached stills, animated into a slow lateral tracking move as afternoon light rakes across a concrete wall. Reference audio used as the ambient bed.
Seedance 2.0 is still on the platform and still the right pick for plenty of jobs. Three differences decide which one you should reach for:
Seedance 2.0
Seedance 2.5
Duration
4–15 seconds
4–30 seconds
Resolution
720p
480p or 720p
Cost per second
35 credits
30 (480p) / 60 (720p)
Reference images
9
30
Reference videos
3
10 (30s total)
Reference audio
3
10 (30s total)
Native audio
Yes
Yes
Read that pricing row carefully, because it cuts both ways. At 720p, Seedance 2.5 is nearly twice the per-second cost of 2.0 — a 10-second 720p clip is 600 credits against 350. But at 480p it is actually cheaper than 2.0 at 30 credits per second, which makes it the best drafting model in the family. The workflow that follows from this is obvious once you see it: iterate at 480p until the prompt is right, then run the keeper at 720p.
Pricing & Specifications
Seedance 2.5 bills per second of output at 30 credits per second at 480p and 60 credits per second at 720p. There is no minimum charge beyond the 4-second floor and no per-generation fee.
Duration
480p
720p
4 seconds
120
240
6 seconds
180
360
10 seconds
300
600
15 seconds
450
900
20 seconds
600
1,200
25 seconds
750
1,500
30 seconds
900
1,800
One billing detail that catches people out: reference videos are charged too. Seedance 2.5 meters the runtime of any reference clip you attach at the same per-second rate as the output, because the model processes that footage as input. A 10-second 720p generation with 8 seconds of reference video is billed as 18 seconds — 1,080 credits rather than 600. The cost estimate on the generation page already accounts for attached footage, so the figure you see before hitting generate is the figure you pay. Reference images and reference audio are not metered.
Supported aspect ratios are 21:9, 16:9, 4:3, 1:1, 3:4 and 9:16, plus an “auto” option that lets the model choose based on your prompt and references.
Text-to-Video
A 30-second aerial descent over a coastal wind farm at sunrise, turbines turning in slow unison, shadows stretching across water, the camera easing down to skim just above the surface. Ambient wind and low rotor thrum.
Text-to-Video
Thirty Seconds From a Sentence
Describe the shot and Seedance 2.5 returns a finished clip with audio. What makes the text mode interesting at this length is that it holds a structure: give it three or four beats with timings and it will pace them, rather than looping one idea for 30 seconds the way shorter models tend to when pushed.
Set duration anywhere from 4 to 30 seconds. Audio generation is on by default and can be toggled off in settings if you plan to lay your own track over the top.
Image-to-Video
A still studio portrait brought to life: the subject shifts weight, breathes, blinks, and turns slightly toward camera as the light softens, holding the exact framing and grade of the source image for a full 18 seconds.
Image-to-Video
Animate a Still, and Keep Going
Upload a photograph or a generated still and Seedance 2.5 animates it while respecting the original composition, grade and subject. Thirty seconds is long enough that a single still can carry a whole scene — a portrait that breathes, glances away and settles, or a product shot that rotates through a full lighting sweep without cutting.
Pairs naturally with our image generator for a text → still → video pipeline where you lock the frame before spending video credits.
Reference-to-Video
Using a 12-image reference set of one product plus two short reference clips for camera language, generate a 20-second spot that matches the reference lighting and motion style exactly while introducing a new environment.
Reference-to-Video
Fifty Files of Creative Direction
This is where Seedance 2.5 pulls furthest ahead. Attach up to 30 images, 10 video clips and 10 audio files in one generation, then point at them directly in your prompt using @Image1, @Video2 and @Audio1 mentions. Images set subject, wardrobe and palette; video clips teach camera language and motion; audio sets the sonic bed.
Video and audio references each get a 30-second total runtime budget — 30 seconds of video across all clips, and 30 seconds of audio across all files. Images have no runtime limit, so a 30-image set costs nothing extra.
Six Things Thirty Seconds Unlocks
Duration limits shape what people even attempt. Here is work that was awkward or impossible at 15 seconds and is straightforward now.
1. A complete ad spot, not a fragment of one
Thirty seconds is the standard broadcast and pre-roll slot, and it is no accident that it is also the length agencies brief against. Previously you built a 30-second spot from six generations and prayed the grade matched. Now the whole thing arrives as one file with a continuous audio bed. If you need structure — hook, demonstration, benefit, call to action — write those as four timed beats in the prompt and the model will pace them.
2. Process and instruction video
Anything that teaches a sequence — a recipe, an assembly, a technique, a repair — falls apart when cut into five-second chunks, because the whole value is watching one continuous action. A 30-second unbroken shot of hands completing a task, with synchronized foley, is genuinely useful content rather than a stylish loop. This is the single biggest category we have seen open up.
3. Property and space walkthroughs
Real estate, hospitality, retail and venue marketing all live on continuous movement through space. Viewers read a cut as a hidden edit, so a stitched walkthrough of a room actively undermines trust in what it shows. One unbroken 30-second glide through a floor plan reads as a real place.
4. A full verse for music and lyric video
A verse or a chorus is typically 15 to 30 seconds. Generate against the beat structure in your prompt, attach the audio as a reference so the visual rhythm keys off the real track, and you get a section you can drop into a longer edit without fighting continuity at every bar. Build a full video from four or five sections instead of forty clips.
5. Episodic content with a consistent cast
The 30-image reference set matters more than it sounds for serial content. Build a reference library for a character — face from multiple angles, wardrobe, lighting, environment — and reuse it across every episode. Nine images was enough to suggest a character; thirty is enough to pin one down, which is what makes recurring-cast content viable without training a custom model.
6. Establishing shots and B-roll beds
Editors do not want five-second B-roll; they want thirty seconds they can trim anywhere. Long atmospheric plates — a city waking up, weather crossing a landscape, a factory floor running — are cheap to generate at 480p, and give an edit room actual coverage to work with instead of clips that dictate their own cut points.
The mistake almost everyone makes on their first 30-second generation is reusing a five-second prompt. A single-sentence description gives the model one idea and 30 seconds to fill, and what comes back drifts, loops or slows to nothing. Long generations need structure, and Seedance accepts extremely long prompts, so there is no reason to be terse.
Write beats, with timings
Break the runtime into three to five beats and give each one a duration, a camera move and an action: “0–8s: slow push in on the workbench as hands lay out tools. 8–18s: camera rises and tracks left following the assembly. 18–30s: pull back to a wide as the finished piece is lifted into the light.” This is the highest-leverage change you can make, and it is the difference between a scene and a loop.
State what must not change
Over 30 seconds there is far more room for drift than over five. Spell out the constants explicitly — subject appearance, wardrobe, time of day, colour palette, lens character, whether the audio bed is continuous. A line like “same woman in the red wool coat throughout, overcast daylight, muted palette, no cuts” costs you nothing and prevents the most common failure.
Say “single continuous shot” if that is what you want
Left to its own devices, the model will sometimes introduce cuts across a long generation, which is reasonable given how most 30-second video is shot. If you want an unbroken take, ask for one in those words. Conversely, if you want cuts, describe them as cuts and the model will place them at your beats.
Describe the audio
Native audio is generated from your prompt, so it responds to direction. Naming the sonic elements — “grinder, chatter, door chime, no music” — produces a markedly better bed than leaving it to inference, and specifying no music is worth knowing about if you intend to score the clip yourself.
Draft at 480p
At 30 credits per second, 480p is the cheapest way to test whether a long prompt holds together. Prompt structure, pacing and continuity all read perfectly well at 480p; only fine detail does not. Lock the prompt at 480p, then regenerate the keeper at 720p.
Put a 30-second prompt to the test
Draft at 480p, finish at 720p, and let native audio come along for the ride. Seedance 2.5 is live on the video generator now.
Seedance 2.5 does not replace anything on the platform. It owns one axis — length and reference depth — and gives up ground on others.
vs. Seedance 2.0: Use 2.0 for short 720p clips, where its flat 35 credits per second beats 2.5's 60. Use 2.5 when you need more than 15 seconds, a reference set larger than 9 images, or a cheap 480p draft.
vs. VEO 3.1: VEO leads on resolution and on naturalistic, documentary-feeling footage, and it is the better choice for a polished 8-second hero shot. It cannot give you 30 continuous seconds, and it has nothing comparable to a 50-file reference set.
vs. Sora 2: Sora 2 remains the value pick for exploring ideas in short clips. Once a project needs long takes or tight visual consistency against references, that cost advantage stops being the deciding factor.
vs. Kling and the O3 family: Kling is stronger on stylized and anime-leaning work and offers motion-control editing that Seedance does not. They complement each other — Kling for stylized shorts, Seedance 2.5 for long-form realism.
Up to 30 seconds in a single generation, with a 4-second minimum. That is double Seedance 2.0’s 15-second ceiling and the longest single-shot output of any video model on Fauxto Labs. Because it is one generation rather than several stitched together, lighting, wardrobe, character appearance and audio stay continuous for the full 30 seconds.
How much does Seedance 2.5 cost?
Pricing is per second of output and depends on resolution: 30 credits per second at 480p and 60 credits per second at 720p. A 10-second 720p clip is 600 credits; a full 30-second 720p clip is 1,800 credits. At 480p the same clips are 300 and 900 credits.
What resolution does Seedance 2.5 output?
Seedance 2.5 outputs 480p or 720p. There is no 1080p tier from the provider. If you need a higher-resolution master, generate at 720p and run the result through our video upscaler.
Does Seedance 2.5 generate audio?
Yes. Native synchronized audio is generated by default across text-to-video, image-to-video and reference-to-video. It covers ambience, effects and dialogue that lines up with the on-screen action, so a 30-second clip arrives as a finished scene rather than a silent plate.
How many reference files can Seedance 2.5 take?
Up to 30 images, 10 videos and 10 audio files in a single reference-to-video generation. Video and audio references each have their own 30-second total runtime budget — 30 seconds of video across all clips, and 30 seconds of audio across all files. Images have no runtime limit.
What is the difference between Seedance 2.5 and Seedance 2.0?
Three things matter most. Duration doubles from 15 to 30 seconds. The reference set grows from 9 images / 3 videos / 3 audio to 30 / 10 / 10. And pricing moves to a resolution-based rate — 30 credits per second at 480p, 60 at 720p, versus a flat 35 at 720p for 2.0. Seedance 2.0 remains the cheaper choice for short 720p clips; 2.5 is what you use for long takes, big reference sets, and cheap 480p drafting.
Are reference videos charged as well as the output?
Yes. Seedance 2.5 meters the runtime of any reference video you attach at the same per-second rate as the output, because the model processes that footage as input. A 10-second 720p generation with 8 seconds of reference video is billed as 18 seconds. The cost estimate on the generation page includes attached reference footage, so the number you see before generating is the number you pay.
How should I prompt a 30-second Seedance 2.5 clip?
Write it as a shot list with timing, not a single description. Break the 30 seconds into three to five beats, give each one a duration, a camera move and an action, and state what carries across all of them (subject, wardrobe, lighting, palette). Seedance accepts very long prompts, so specificity costs you nothing — a vague prompt is the main reason long generations drift.
Is Seedance 2.5 better than VEO 3.1 or Sora 2?
They win on different things. VEO 3.1 leads on resolution and naturalistic, documentary-style footage. Sora 2 is the value pick for short exploratory clips. Seedance 2.5 is the only one of the three that produces a continuous 30-second take with native audio and a 30-image reference set, which makes it the right tool for long-form single-shot work and for anything that has to stay visually consistent against a large reference library.
Can I use Seedance 2.5 for commercial projects?
Yes. Videos you generate on Fauxto Labs can be used commercially, including in paid advertising, client work and monetized social content. See our terms for the full detail.
Ready to Try Seedance 2.5?
Thirty seconds of continuous video, native audio, and reference sets fifty files deep. Free credits to start — no card required.