If you searched for a Seedance tutorial, you probably already saw a clip that looked too smooth to be AI. Seedance is known for two things: believable motion and physics, and native multi-shot output, which means one prompt can produce a clip that cuts between angles like a real edit. That second part is what makes it useful for ads and social content, not just demos. This guide has 8 sections, 5 copy-paste blocks of prompts or commands, an 8-question Q&A, and takes about 26 minutes to read.
If you searched for a Seedance tutorial, you probably already saw a clip that looked too smooth to be AI. Seedance is known for two things: believable motion and physics, and native multi-shot output, which means one prompt can produce a clip that cuts between angles like a real edit. That second part is what makes it useful for ads and social content, not just demos. This guide has 8 sections, 5 copy-paste blocks of prompts or commands, an 8-question Q&A, and takes about 26 minutes to read.
This guide is written for a first-time user. You will learn where Seedance actually lives (it is not a standalone website you sign up for), how to run a text-to-video generation, how to animate a still image, how to write prompts that control the shots and the camera, and how to turn the raw clip into a finished ad with voice and captions. Every step uses menu names and prompts you can copy.
Seedance is also one of the video tools taught hands-on inside the AI Mastery course, where the video module goes from prompt to published ad. This article covers the core workflow so you can start today.
Seedance is a family of video generation models built by ByteDance, the company behind TikTok and CapCut. Seedance 1.0 arrived in 2025 with native multi-shot video, strong motion and physics, and both text-to-video and image-to-video. The latest Seedance generation, released in 2026, adds better audio and longer, more controllable shots. Do not worry about version numbers; the interfaces below always expose the current model.
There is no "seedance.com" account. You reach the model through products that embed it:
AI Video. This is the cleanest place to learn, and it is what the steps in this tutorial use.For this tutorial, open Dreamina in a desktop browser. Mobile works, but prompts are easier to edit on a keyboard, and you will be editing prompts a lot.
Best for learning. Web app, clear mode switch between text-to-video and image-to-video, visible credit balance.
Best when you edit in CapCut already. Generate, then cut, caption and export without leaving the app.
The Chinese-market app. Same model family, but sign-up and UI are in Chinese.
Best for batch or automated generation. Pay per second of video; read the provider's parameter list first.
Text-to-video means you describe the scene and Seedance invents everything: subject, setting, lighting and motion. Follow these steps in Dreamina.
AI Video in the left sidebar. Make sure the mode toggle at the top of the panel is on Text to Video.9:16 for TikTok, Reels and Shorts, 16:9 for YouTube and landing pages, 1:1 for feed posts. Start with the shortest duration offered while you test prompts.A barista pours latte art in a sunlit cafe, close-up on the cup, steam rising, slow push-in, warm morning light, shallow depth of field.Generate. A job card appears with a progress bar. Short clips usually finish in a couple of minutes, but wait times depend on server load.Regenerate to try the same prompt again, or edit the prompt and generate a new variant.If the first result looks flat, do not rewrite everything. Check three things in order: is there a physical action in the prompt, is there exactly one camera movement, and is the lighting named. Nine times out of ten one of those slots is empty, and filling it changes the clip more than any style word will.
One habit to build now: keep a plain text file of every prompt and what it produced. Video generation is not deterministic, so your notes become your real learning curve.
9:16 for TikTok, Reels and Shorts. 16:9 for YouTube and landing pages. Set it before you write the prompt.
Start with the shortest clip length while testing. Longer clips cost more credits and decay more at the end.
Lite or Fast for drafts, the full Seedance entry for the final take. Same prompt works on both.
Rename downloads with shot and prompt version, such as barista-pushin-v3.mp4, so you can regenerate a matching variant later.
Image-to-video is the mode most ad creators actually use. You supply a still frame (a product photo, a Midjourney or Nano Banana render, a screenshot of your app) and Seedance animates it. The look of your brand stays locked because the first frame is yours.
AI Video, flip the toggle to Image to Video. An upload box replaces the empty canvas.Last frame slot; use it when you want the clip to end on a specific image, such as a logo card.The bottle slowly rotates on the marble counter, water droplets slide down the glass, camera orbits left, soft studio lighting stays constant.bottle-orbit-v2.mp4.Which source images animate best? Photos with a single clear subject, a plain or softly blurred background and even lighting give the model less to guess. Busy scenes with many overlapping objects tend to produce ghosting when the camera moves. If your product photo has a cluttered background, cut it out and place it on a simple gradient before uploading. Also keep the subject away from the very edge of the frame, because any camera movement will push edge content out of view and the model has to invent what replaces it.
A useful pairing: generate your first frame with an image model that follows text well, then animate it here. The Seedance vs Veo 3 vs Sora 2 comparison covers which model wins for which kind of footage if you are still choosing.
Seedance's signature feature is native multi-shot generation: describe several shots in one prompt and the model cuts between them while keeping the same character, outfit and setting. Write each shot as a numbered line and label the framing.
Example structure:
Shot 1 (wide): A woman in a yellow raincoat walks across a rainy Tokyo crossing at night, neon reflections. Shot 2 (medium): She stops and looks up, rain on her face, neon light flickering. Shot 3 (close-up): Her hand opens a small red umbrella, water droplets fly off.
Rules that help: keep the subject description identical across shots, keep the number of shots small (two or three) for short durations, and put the emotional beat in the last shot. If the model merges shots into one continuous take, add the word cut to between lines.
Seedance responds well to plain film vocabulary. Use one camera instruction per shot and put it at the end of the line.
slow push-in or dolly in: moves toward the subject, adds intimacy.pull back or dolly out: reveals the setting.pan left / pan right: rotates the camera horizontally.tilt up / tilt down: reveals height or the ground.orbit or arc shot: circles a product. Great for image-to-video.tracking shot: follows a walking or driving subject.handheld vs locked-off tripod: sets how much shake you get.low angle / high angle / drone shot: sets the vantage point.Combine framing and movement, for example close-up, slow push-in, shallow depth of field. Avoid stacking three movements in one shot; the model will pick one and ignore the rest.
Style words control the look of every frame. Pick one lighting phrase and one style phrase, not five.
golden hour, overcast soft light, neon night, studio softbox, candlelight, backlit silhouette.cinematic 35mm film, documentary realism, commercial product shot, anime, stop motion, vintage VHS.slow motion, real time, time lapse.If your brand has a fixed palette, name the colors explicitly: teal and gold color palette. Seedance will hold it across shots more reliably than a vague "brand colors".
Most good Seedance prompts follow the same order. Use this formula until it becomes automatic:
[Subject + one defining detail] + [Action] + [Setting] + [Lighting] + [Camera framing + movement] + [Style] + [Pace]
Keep it to two or three sentences per shot. Fill every slot, because a missing slot is a slot the model fills with its own guess. Here are five prompts you can paste as they are and then adapt.
The sneaker on the white podium slowly rotates 180 degrees, laces sway slightly, dust particles float in a beam of light. Studio softbox lighting, commercial product shot, camera orbits right at the same height, real time.
A young man in a grey hoodie opens a laptop at a kitchen table, morning sunlight through the window, coffee steam rising beside him.Medium shot, slow push-in, shallow depth of field, documentary realism, real time.
Shot 1 (wide): A golden retriever waits by a front door in a bright hallway, tail wagging. Shot 2 (close-up): The door handle turns. Shot 3 (medium): The dog leaps toward a woman in a blue coat as she walks in, both laughing.Warm afternoon light, handheld, cinematic 35mm film, real time.
Chopsticks lift a glossy piece of teriyaki salmon from a black bowl, sauce drips slowly, sesame seeds scatter. Extreme close-up, tilt up to follow the salmon, overhead softbox lighting, commercial food shot, slow motion.
The phone on the desk stays still while the screen content scrolls smoothly upward, a hand enters from the right and taps once, subtle screen glow.Locked-off tripod, top-down angle, clean studio lighting, real time.
Notice that none of the prompts include on-screen text. Add text later in the editor. Video models still mangle letters, and a misspelled word is the fastest way to reveal a clip as AI.
Use the Lite or Fast Seedance entry to test composition, then switch to the full model for the final take.
If you change camera, lighting and action at once, you will not know what fixed or broke the clip.
For image-to-video, regenerate the still if it looks wrong. No motion prompt rescues a bad first frame.
API routes and some apps expose a seed number. Keep it and edit the prompt slightly for a controlled variation.
Long prompts with contradictory adjectives produce mushy motion. Cut back to the formula slots and rebuild.
Running the same prompt twice costs the same as tweaking and rerunning, and gives you a real choice.
Clips often wobble in the last second. Cut those frames in the editor instead of spending credits again.
A raw Seedance clip is B-roll. An ad needs a hook, a voice, captions and a call to action. Here is the workflow that goes from prompt to post.
Text then Auto captions to generate word-level subtitles, then choose a bold caption style with high contrast.This exact script-to-storyboard-to-video-to-voice-to-caption chain is the backbone of the video module in the full AI course, where you build a complete ad end to end. If you plan to automate parts of it, the how to build an AI agent for beginners shows how to chain these tools with a simple loop, and the prompt engineering guide teaches the same one-variable-at-a-time method for text and image models.
Each generation produces a short clip, and the maximum duration depends on the model entry and the app you use. Longer ads are made by generating several clips and stitching them, which is why the storyboard step above matters. Resolution and frame rate options also vary by app; check the settings panel before you export, and upscale in CapCut if you need a larger master.
Dreamina and CapCut sell credits; the full Seedance model costs more credits per clip than the Lite or Fast entry, and longer or higher-resolution clips cost more. API partners bill per second of generated video. Prices change often, so check the current pricing page of whichever route you use before you plan a campaign. A safe rule: assume every finished shot will take two to three generations, and budget credits accordingly.
One more cost that is easy to forget: your own time. A generation that takes three minutes and then needs three retries is ten minutes per shot, so a three-shot ad is a solid half hour of waiting before editing begins. Batch your generations. Queue all three shots at once, then step away, rather than generating, watching, and generating again. If you are on the API route, the same logic applies: submit jobs in parallel and poll for results instead of running them one at a time.
rotates 90 degrees instead of a full spin), or use a cleaner, higher-contrast first frame.Official documentation for the Dreamina app and the CapCut AI video features lives on their help centers: Dreamina and CapCut. For the API route, read the parameter list on your provider's page before writing a single line of code.
This tutorial covers the Seedance workflow. The AI Mastery course is 60 lessons across 12 modules that take you from beginner to advanced: Gemini, Claude Code, Codex, building AI agents, Seedance video production, website building and more. Every module has quizzes, you get lifetime access, and you can preview 2 lessons free before you decide.