Top Beginner’s Guide to AI Video

from Kling to Sora to Gen-4 to Veo and more. The Text & Image to Video Breakthroughs of 2025 📺

Runway.

Good Morning,

Today we continue our AI learning guides series. This is our first complete guide to text to video and image to video with a full spectrum of tips, resources and rankings of the top players.

Just like we anticipated, 2025 is shaping up to be a significant year for text-to-video innovation in LLMs. While Google’s latest Veo 2 costs a shocking 50 cents per second of video, which adds up to $30 per minute or $1,800 per hour, there are more consumer friendly options. Many new options are emerging in 2025 and we’ll go over all of the best ones.

I asked

Daniel Nest

of Why Try AI Newsletter to break it down for us. Today’s guide on text-to-video options is one of the biggest guides on visual AI we’ve ever hosted.

‘Why Try AI’ Newsletter | By Daniel Nest

Many of our gest guide contributors in Applied AI have Newsletters more appealing for readers who might want to learn how to apply and do things with Generative AI. Daniel also does live workshops and video guides. He has so much bonus content available on Sundays, it’s kind of incredible. Daniel shows why he’s known for visual AI guides and AI news regarding these and other tools.

One of the best funded AI startups in the space, AI startup Runway recently announced its Gen-4. Some of the claims of Runway here are super interesting:

Runway claims that it can generate consistent characters, locations, and objects across scenes, maintain “coherent world environments,” and regenerate elements from different perspectives and positions within scenes.

• Gen-4 can utilize visual references, combined with instructions, to create new images and videos utilizing consistent styles, subjects, locations, and more, all without the need for fine-tuning or additional training.

Click to play scene.

What this demonstrates is text-to-video in the 2020s will likely evolve to ending up producing incredible movies, cinema, YouTube content and new kinds of mixed media in the 2030s. If synthetic video is your thing. This is not a sponsor or affiliate, just breaking news and Gen-4 is far from being fully rolled out yet.

Runway AI is backed by the likes of Salesforce, Google, and Nvidia, offers a suite of AI video tools, including video-generating models like Gen-4. So what are we talking about here?

Demos on X

I can certainly appreciate the realism of what AI video is becoming: (People are chaining Midjourney + Magnific + Runway Gen-4 together:)

The facial expressions here are fairly sophisticated:

Or how about combining Suno (music generation) into the mix as well:

As this guide will show, OpenAI’s Sora is clearly not the only game in town. Daniel says of Runway Gen-4 that as of early April it’s just rolling out now, the "consistency" feature isn't live, and it's currently just image-to-video, no text-to-video.

Best of the Nest 🐣 with Daniel

1. Here Are My Go-To AI Tools

2. “Help Me Help You.” How to Get AI Chatbots To Prompt Themselves.

3. Minimum Viable Prompt: Your Cure for AI Overwhelm

4. The Skeptical Writer's Guide to AI

If applying AI is part of what you are looking for, Why Try AI is a very helpful resource.

🦉 Try Kling AI | Try Dream Machine by Luma Labs | Try Hailuo AI | Try Pika Labs | Try Hunyuan Video (Tencent) | Try Genmo Mochi AI - try these tools for yourself after reading this guide, and so many more inside. The way Daniel breaks down each model and their capabilities is obviously the result of dozens of hours of tinkering and experience with each one.

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💡 Trending AI Guides 🗺️

These are some of the most popular read guides of last few months on AI Supremacy:

1. How to use Perplexity in your daily workflow 👀

2. NotebookLM How-to Guide 2024

3. Prompt Engineering from 2020 to 2025 ✨

4. How to use NotebookLM for personalized knowledge synthesis

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This guide is beyond epic.

• Get full-access for less than $2 a week for all my best content.

• This guide will also features a video guide by Daniel.

• The “vibe coding” of cinematography is one of the fastest moving areas in multimodal large language model innovation in 2025.

• Ranking the best Video AI tools, price, notes, and in-depth description.

• Discover the best tools for AI video and best practices of applying them. Creativity is changing with these tools and it’s hard to imagine where it leads.

Finally let’s get to the guide:

A Complete Beginner’s Guide to AI Video

By

Daniel Nest

February, 2025. Learn more about Daniel.

🦕 Nest is Best guys! 🥚 Let’s go:

Beginner’s Guide to AI Video

What you need to know about video models and how to prompt them.

We are entering new uncharted territory:

Source: Make-A-Video (Download GIF)

"What is this nightmare fuel, Daniel?" you rightfully ask.

That, friend, is an AI-generated video from late 2022 of a baby sloth using a computer.

It’s just one of several creepy demo clips from Meta’s announcement of its Make-A-Video system that could turn text descriptions into short videos.

Believe it or not, that sloth video was considered state-of-the-art at the time.

Remember: Text-to-image models were just starting to get decent, so text-to-video ones seemed like science fiction.

That’s a video for the same “sloth” prompt created by Hailuo AI, one of the many modern video models.

We’ve come a long way in just over two years, haven’t we?

Today, anyone with an idea can instantly turn a short text description into a video that's often indistinguishable from reality.

If you haven't already tried text-to-video models, this intro guide is for you.

Here's what you'll learn if you stick around:

• Introduction to AI video: What can today's models do?

• Prompting basics: My quick start guide to prompting video models.

• Major AI video models: A comprehensive list of video models on the market, with video output comparisons.

Let’s go!

Introduction to AI video

First things first.

Obviously.

Before we dive headfirst into the enchanted world of AI video models, I’d like to highlight that there are currently somewhat different flavors of text-to-video platforms.

We can broadly slot them into three categories:

1. Animated avatars

These text-to-video sites let you provide a script to be read out by a lifelike AI persona powered by a text-to-speech model under the hood. Such platforms typically have a business slant, since animated talking heads are especially useful for training videos, presentations, and so on.

Prominent examples: Synthesia and HeyGen

2. Slideshow creators

These tools turn a script or even a vague request into an entire video narrative by stitching together stock images, stock footage, AI-generated clips, B-roll footage, etc. into a complete video, typically accompanied by a voiceover.

Prominent examples: Pictory and InVideo

3. True AI video models

These foundational models can generate brand-new video scenes from nothing but a prompt, much like text-to-image models do for pictures.

This third category is what I’ll be diving into below!

Note: In reality, things aren’t quite as black-and-white as I’m making them sound. For instance, some sites that I call “slideshow creators” (e.g. Hedra) also offer their own underlying text-to-video models or incorporate third-party tools for video generation. But the above categorization is still useful for building a mental model of the different options.

Now that we’re on the same page, let’s look at the video models in the third category—what they can do and how to use them.

AI video Nuggets from the Nest 🥚 resources:

• 10 Free AI Image-To-Video Tools: Tested

• 6 Text-To-Video Sites: Tested

• 6 Free Article-To-Video Tools: Tested

• Let’s Make a Movie Teaser With AI

• A Taste of Text-To-Video: Two Recent Tools

What can AI video models do?

5:19 Walkthrough/How-to

Today’s video models turn different inputs into video clips and many of them offer additional features to control the output.

Let’s look at what they’re capable of.

1. Text-to-video generation

This is the most basic feature: Every video model lets you describe a scene with words and then generates a video based on your description.

If you’ve ever generated AI pictures using a text-to-image tool, you’ll likely feel right at home with text-to-video prompting.

2. Image-to-video generation

Most video models let you go beyond pure text description by uploading a reference image.

They’ll use this image as the first frame of the resulting video, which gives you more precise control over the output. You anchor your scene with the starting image, then you provide a text prompt that describes how it should develop from there. (I compared 10 such models in September 2024.)

With some of these, you can also provide the last frame to create a video transition between the two frames.

Note that even if you use anchor images, you’ll usually want text prompts to describe the scene and any transition between the frames.

It’s important to understand the anatomy of such text prompts, which is why I’ll look at prompting basics in the “Text-to-video prompting 101” section.

3. Advanced features

In addition to text-to-video and image-to-video capabilities, certain platforms offer extra features, including:

• Motion brush: Select separate areas of the scene to animate individually.

• Lip syncing: Make your characters talk using voice input.

• Retexturing: Reimagine the entire look of an underlying driving video.

• Recropping: Change the aspect ratio by filling in gaps using AI.

• Special effects: Insert reference objects into videos, apply preset visual effects, and more.

For this intro guide, I’ll focus on the core text-to-video functionality.

Text-to-video prompting 101

No matter which video model you decide to work with, you won’t get far without knowing the core concept of prompting them via text. Even if you plan to rely on reference images for your AI videos, you’ll still have to describe the desired action using words.

As such, it helps to have a framework for thinking about text-to-video prompts and pick up a few best practices.

But don’t worry: It really isn’t rocket science, as you’re about to see.

The anatomy of a video prompt: my “5S Framework”

You’ll find plenty of guides on prompting AI video models.

Adobe recently published one: “Writing effective text prompts for video generation”

After reading many guides and playing with lots of video models, I came up with a “5S Framework” for thinking about text-to-video prompts, which I’m sharing here on “AI Supremacy” for the first time:

• Subject: The main character(s) or object(s). Who or what are they? How do they look?

• Sequence: What actions do they take or what happens to them?

• Setting: Where and when does the scene take place? (Time of day, season, location, etc.)

• Shot: What’s the initial angle and framing? How does the camera move and zoom during the scene?

• Style: What’s the visual aesthetic of the video? Is it a live-action movie, a Pixar cartoon, or a claymation film? May include details like lighting, type of camera film, mood, etc.

Color Version

Let’s look at an example prompt and break it down into its five “S” components:

“Cartoon animation: Wide shot of a giant blue robot running through the streets of a futuristic city at night. Camera zooms in on the robot’s face to reveal glowing red eyes.”

1. Subject

2. Sequence

3. Setting

4. Shot

5. Style

Here’s what happens when we run this prompt through an AI video model:

Note that you won’t always need to specify all five “S” elements in your prompt. Just the subject and sequence may often be enough.

For instance, if you’re making B-roll footage of a person watching TV, a simple “woman watching TV” is plenty to go on. The AI video model will fill in the blanks and give you a passable filler clip.

Don’t be afraid to experiment.

This brings us to…

Prompting best practices

Here are a few rule-of-thumb guidelines for working with text-to-video prompts:

1. Start simple, then iterate

Don’t overengineer your scene from the get-go. Write a shorter prompt first and see what output the video model generates. This will give you an idea of the default style of your chosen video model. Then you can build up your prompt and specify any missing concepts.

2. Focus on the must-have details

Figure out which elements of your scene are critical and describe those in greater detail.

For less important aspects, the video model will fill in the blanks on its own. It might even inspire you by imagining elements of the scene you didn’t think to describe.

3. Reduce scene complexity

Generally speaking, you want a single character performing a single action per scene.

Trying to create a clip with too many moving parts increases the chance of things getting all wonky. AI models aren’t perfect, so don’t expect them to handle nuanced choreography just yet.

Exceptions include situations that naturally involve many people, such as shots of crowds at a concert, battlefield scenes, and so on.

4. Avoid 5S conflicts

You want your 5S elements to tell a coherent story together.

So don’t ask for a wide, zoomed-out establishing shot while also describing a single character’s fingernails in great detail. Keep your requests consistent to avoid confusing AI.

5. Stick to short clips

Most video models let you specify the desired length of the output clip, typically between 5 and 10 seconds.

I recommend selecting the minimum available length, for a few reasons:

• You will burn through fewer AI credits (longer clips tend to cost more).

• You’ll risk fewer errors. The longer the clip, the higher the chance of it going off the rails.

• You can always extend a clip that works. Some platforms let you do this natively; in others, you can use the last frame of your original clip as the starting frame of an extension clip.

6. Use a starting image where possible

If your model supports image-to-video generation, use it!

It’s cheaper and faster to create lots of AI images than video clips. So for any given scene, first create your desired starting image in one of the many text-to-image models.

When you have the starting frame you’re happy with, feed it to the video model to animate the action. This also lets you avoid describing certain 5S elements—the video model will automatically take cues from your starting image.

7. Try the same prompt in many models

Video models are different, so they’ll produce different outputs from the same text prompt.

If you’re not getting good results in one model or want to explore a range of options, run the same prompt in a few separate models to see which one better aligns with your vision.

As a side effect, this will also help you figure out which models work best for specific purposes.

And speaking of different AI video models...

List of AI video models

In late 2023, there were about six text-to-video models on the market.

Today, that number has more than doubled.

In addition to Western AI labs, many frontier video models now come from Chinese providers.

So let’s take stock of the current video model landscape.

I’ll introduce the major models and tell you where you can try them. To spice things up, I’ll ask each model to create a video for the following simple prompt:

Prompt: Drunk pirate from the 1800s trying to use a modern laptop.

This will also help to demonstrate why it’s worth trying the same prompt in multiple models.

Let’s go! Click the table for a live link.

1. Adobe Firefly Video

Firefly Video is a relatively new US entrant: It launched in public beta in mid-October 2024.

Firefly Video’s claim to fame is that it was trained on licensed and public domain content, so it’s commercially safe and you shouldn’t run into copyright issues. Firefly Video also lets you select from preset camera angles and movements, so it’s easier to request the framing you want.

If you already use Adobe Creative Cloud products in your workflow, you can run Firefly Video natively inside of those.

Adobe Firefly Video at a glance:

• Maker: Adobe​

• Country: United States​

• Launched: October 2024 (public beta)

• Free to try? Yes​

• Limitations of the free tier: Only two free video clips.

• Pricing: Starts at $9.99/month (Firefly Standard).

• Advanced features: Camera angles and motion presets, start frame/end frame input, video translation, and integration with Adobe Creative Cloud products.

• Where to try: firefly.adobe.com

2. Genmo Mochi 1

Genmo as a platform has been around since 2023, but its new Mochi 1 video model is only several months old. Notably, Mochi 1 is an open-source model, meaning anyone can freely download, modify, and run it.

So if your computer is powerful enough and you’re tech-savvy enough, you can download Mochi 1 from Hugging Face. The rest of us can simply go to Genmo’s official site to generate a few free images per day.

Genmo Mochi 1 at a glance:

• Maker: Genmo​

• Country: United States

• Launched: October 2024​

• Free to try? Yes​ (open-source)

• Limitations of the free tier: Two generations per day, watermark, low queue priority.

• Pricing: Starts at $8/month (Lite)

• Advanced features: Stealth mode for private video creation.

• Where to try: genmo.ai

3. Hailuo AI video-01

Hailuo AI video-01 comes from a Chinese AI company called MiniMax. The model only came out in September 2024 and instantly earned its place among the top AI video models.

The Hailuo AI platform lets you make videos from text prompts, use starting frames, and upload reference images of characters or objects to include those in your videos. There’s also a native text-to-image model.

Hailuo AI video-01 at a glance:

• Maker: MiniMax

• Country: China​

• Launched: September 2024​

• Free to try? Yes​

• Limitations of the free tier: Three generations per day, watermark, low queue priority.

• Pricing: Starts at $9.99/month for annual plans.

• Advanced features: Subject reference uploads, advanced camera controls, optional auto-prompt optimization, and image-to-video creation.

• Where to try: hailuoai.video

4. HunyuanVideo

HunyuanVideo is an open-source model from China released by Tencent in December 2024. It’s the largest open-source video model on the market and performs admirably compared with top-tier competitors like Runway Gen-3.

It was initially purely a text-to-image model, but it got image-to-video capabilities in March 2025, so you can now use starting frames for video generation as well.

HunyuanVideo at a glance:

• Maker: Tencent​

• Country: China​

• Launched: December 2024​

• Free to try? Yes​ (open-source)

• Limitations of the free tier: N/A

• Pricing: N/A

• Advanced features: Video-to-audio synthesis; avatar animation control; high-resolution video generation​

Where to try:Hugging Face (select one of the spaces in the right-hand column)

5. Kling AI v1.6

Kling was the first Chinese video model to be seen as a serious contender globally. Its creator, Kuaishou AI, released the original model in June 2024. A new 1.6 version came out in December 2024 with improved output quality.

The Kling AI site also functions as a creator platform with advanced options like character lip sync, special effects, and an “Elements” feature that lets you combine up to four reference images in a single video.

Kling v1.6 at a glance:

• Maker: Kuaishou

• Country: China​

• Launched: December 2024​

• Free to try? Yes​

• Limitations of the free tier: Only standard features, no access to higher-quality “Professional” mode, limited number of credits, watermark, no upscaling.

• Pricing: Starts at $6.99 per month

• Advanced features: Lip syncing, camera controls, video extension, special effects, merging multiple reference images in one video.

• Where to try:klingai.com

6. Luma Ray2

Luma Dream Machine has also been around since June 2024. The newer Ray2 model, however, came out as recently as January 2025. It’s much better at handling finer details like hand movements and facial expressions.

Ray2 is an expensive model to run, so you can’t access it with Luma’s free plan. The platform itself has a minimalist interface but offers many advanced options like reference images and keyframe transitions.

Luma Ray2 at a glance:

• Maker: Luma Labs​

• Country: United States​

• Launched: January 2025

• Free to try? No (but Ray 1.6 is free)

• Limitations of the free tier: 720p resolution, no access to the newer Ray2 model, limited amount of credits, non-commercial use, lower queue priority, max 5s clips.

• Pricing: Starts at $6.99 per month for annual plans.

• Advanced features: Image-to-video, keyframe transition, shot and camera movement presets, loop video option.

• Where to try: lumalabs.ai

  ​

7. Pika Labs 2.2

Pika Labs is one of the veterans in AI video and has been around since late 2023.

In my experience, Pika’s video model doesn’t have the most polished output quality. To wit: Our pirate above apparently gets possessed by demons halfway through the clip, and that’s representative of my general impression of Pika’s videos.

But Pika partially makes up for this by being the “fun” platform with many unique effects. You can insert objects into videos, swap objects out, and select from dozens of preset video transitions to apply.

Pika Labs 2.2 at a glance:

• Maker: Pika Labs​

• Country: United States

• Launched: 2023

• Free to try? No (but version 1.5 is free)

• Limitations of the free tier: Limited generations, lower queue priority, only version 1.5, no access to special effects.

• Pricing: Starts at $8 for annual plans.

• Advanced features: First/last frame, character swapping, object additions, advanced camera controls, and dozens of preset special effects to apply to a video.

• Where to try: pika.art

8. PixVerse V4

Made by Beijing-based company AIsphere​, PixVerse reminds me quite a bit of Pika: It might not have the best quality videos but its platform adds plenty of bells and whistles like video restyling, reference character uploads, and dozens of preset special effects.

What’s more, PixVerse is one of the few platforms that lets you automatically add new sound effects and speech to your video clips.

PixVerse V4 at a glance:

• Maker: AIsphere

• Country: China

• Launched: February 2024​

• Free to try? Yes​

• Limitations of the free tier: Watermark, lower queue priority, few daily generations, SD resolution, limited access to special effects.

• Pricing: Starts at $8 per month for annual plans.

• Advanced features: Add audio effects and speech, image restyling, dozens of preset effects, keyframe transitions, character

• Where to try: app.pixverse.ai

9. Runway Gen-3 Alpha

Runway was the original AI video platform, releasing its first models as far back as early 2023.The latest version, Gen-3 Alpha, is still widely considered one of the top AI video models.

Over time, Runway evolved into a full-fledged, all-in-one platform that lets creators make images, video, 3D objects, add audio, make professional edits, and a lot more. Unfortunately, this comes with a steeper price and strict limitations on free accounts.

Gen-3 Alpha at a glance:

• Maker: Runway​

• Country: United States​

• Launched: June 2024

• Free to try? No (but Gen-2 and Gen-3 Alpha Turbo are)

• Limitations of the free tier: Limited credits, lower queue priority, no access to Gen-3, watermark, no upscaling, no custom voices.

• Pricing: Starts at $12 per month for annual plans.

• Advanced features: Image, audio, and video generation, dozens of professional film editing tools, and “Act One” feature that lets you map your own character video onto the AI-generated one.

• Where to try: runwayml.com

10. SkyReels V1

SkyReels V1 is technically not its own model. Instead, it’s a fine-tuned version of HunyuanVideo above. In short, its maker SkyworkAI took the HunyuanVideo model and trained it further on 10 million high-quality film and movie clips.

As a result, SkyReels V1 can more accurately reflect facial expressions and emotions and is generally better at creating videos of humans. So it might be better suited for scenes that involve close-up shots of faces, dialogues between people, and the like. The SkyReels platform also provides advanced tools for creating storylines and drama-focused video content.

SkyReels V1 at a glance:

• Maker: SkyworkAI​

• Country: Singapore

• Launched: February 2025​

• Free to try? Yes​ (open-source)

• Limitations of the free tier (only applicable on skyreels.ai): Limited credits, slower generations, watermark, no access to advanced features.

• Pricing: Free model, but platform prices start at $7.9 per month for annual plans.

• Advanced features: Storyboarding, audio and music creation, image-to-video, lip syncing, script-to-shots functionality.

• Where to try: skyreels.ai

11. Sora

When OpenAI first teased Sora back in February 2024, it looked head and shoulders above the competition. But the company took almost a year to finally release Sora in December 2024, by which point many Chinese and US competitors had comparable or better models.

While currently not a top-tier model, Sora is decent at generating certain types of videos, offers a few styling presets, and has a “Storyboard” feature where you can stitch multiple clips together into a storyline. If you already pay for a ChatGPT Plus or Pro account, you can access Sora at no extra cost.

Sora at a glance:

• Maker: OpenAI​

• Country: United States​

• Launched: December 2024​

• Free to try? No​

• Limitations of the free tier: N/A

• Pricing: Starts at $20 per month (requires a ChatGPT Plus account)

• Advanced features: Starting image, remix video, video transitions, looping videos, Storyboard workflow.

• Where to try: sora.com

12. Veo 2

Google’s Veo 2 is now widely seen as the best video model on the market. (But check out Wan 2.1 below.)

A few lucky testers like Ethan Mollick have had early access since December 2024. Their verdict: Veo 2 videos look and feel incredibly realistic and follow directions precisely and accurately. Sadly, access is currently managed via a waitlist.

The model is also available to run per-use at sites like fal.ai but at a steep price of $2.5 per five seconds of video, so it’s definitely not for everyone just yet.

Veo 2 at a glance:

• Maker: Google

• Country: United States​

• Launched: December 2024​

• Free to try? No (waitlist)

• Limitations of the free tier: N/A

• Pricing: $2.5 per 5-second clip

• Advanced features: N/A

• Where to try: Join the waitlist at labs.google.com (or pay per clip at fal.ai)

13. Vidu 2.0

Vidu is a collaboration between Chinese AI startup ShengShu Technology and Tsinghua University. Version 2.0 is a relatively new model, which came out in January 2025.

Its claim to fame is ultra-fast generation speed: It takes just 10 seconds to generate a video clip. Vidu is also great at understanding precise instructions written in natural language. The vidu.com platform has a good range of tools that include video templates for repeatable scenes and more.

Vidu 2.0 at a glance:

• Maker: ShengShu Technology & Tsinghua University​

• Country: China​

• Launched: January 2025

• Free to try? Yes

• Limitations of the free tier: Standard resolution, max 4-second clips, watermark, non-commercial use only.

• Pricing: Starts at $8 per month for annual plans.

• Advanced features: Image-to-video features, reference characters, and dozens of video templates.

• Where to try: vidu.com

14. Wan 2.1

Wan 2.1 from Alibaba is the newest model on our list and arguably the most impressive. It’s an open-source model that currently sits at #1 on the VBench Leaderboard, which evaluates the quality of video models. (This leaderboard doesn’t include Google’s Veo 2, so it’s hard to know exactly how the two compare.) It is quite a feat for an open-source model to leave most other models in the dust.

You can download and use the model locally (if your computer can handle it) at no cost from GitHub. Otherwise, you can also use Wan 2.1 via the official wan.video platform, which gives you free daily credit refills.

Wan 2.1 at a glance:

• Maker: Alibaba​

• Country: China​

• Launched: February, 2025​

• Free to try? Yes​ (open-source)

• Limitations of the free tier: N/A

• Pricing: N/A (free daily credits)

• Advanced features: Image-to-video, automatic prompt enhancement suggestions, “Inspiration Mode” that takes creative liberties with your prompt, and sound effects creation.

• Where to try: wan.video

Where to go from here?

Phew, that was a lot!

But look at everything we’ve achieved together:

• Learned about the different categories of AI video

• Discovered what AI video platforms can do

• Picked up a few text-to-video prompting basics and best practices

• Got a solid overview of all major AI models on the market

Before I wrap up, I want to leave you with a few recommendations.

If you’d like to try AI video for yourself but aren’t sure where to start, I propose one of the following options.

1. Krea: Many models in one place

Krea.ai is a one-stop shop for creative AI tools like image and video models.

It lets you test many of the above models in a single place.

Krea currently gives you access to the following:

• Hailuo

• Hunyuan

• Kling 1.6

• Luma Ray 2 (pro only)

• Wan 2.1

• Pika 2.2

• Runway Gen 3 (pro only)

• Veo 2 (pro only)

Aside from the “pro only” models, the rest are available to try for free with a daily credit limit.

In addition to text-to-video, Krea offers several image models, lets you train custom AI models, and gives you access to many other creative AI features.

It’s the easiest way to get a taste of different options without having to switch between multiple sites.

2. Wan.video: Top-tier model at no cost

Alternatively, you can go for wan.video if you want free access to one of the best models on the market: Wan 2.1

You get 50 free credits per day to spend on AI videos or AI images, and the platform can even generate relevant sound effects along with your video.

The only downside is that you may run into long wait times during peak hours.

So head on over to krea.ai or wan.video and put some of what you’ve learned today to the test.

If you end up creating some especially fun videos, I’d love to see them - feel free to share!

I hope you found this introduction to AI video helpful and inspiring.

I’m happy to answer any of your questions, so leave a comment below and I’ll see you there.

Models considered but not included:

• Moonvalley is undergoing an overhaul and re-launching as a new platform. Not available right now.

• FullJourney appears to no longer be available.

• Meta Move Gen isn’t publicly available

• Haiper AI seems to be offline for 30+ days - no status info

• Hedra, LTX, and Morph Studio are more all-in-one platforms than standalone models.

Runway Gen-4

Since this guide was drafted, Runway’s Gen-4 was announced. Here are the details:

This YouTube is 8:20 seconds.

• Read more of our guides.

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