Runway Act-One Guide: I Filmed Myself to Test It

This blog post shares my experience testing Runway ML's new Act-One animation tool, covering both its web interface and Python API. While promising, my results were less impressive than expected.

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What is Runway Act-One?

Runway Act-One animates still character images using video input. It mirrors the facial movements of a human actor onto a static character image. This simplifies character animation, making it accessible beyond highly trained professionals. It works with various character styles, including animated, cinematic, and realistic characters. Creating dialogue is possible by combining multiple short videos.

My Testing Experience:

Act-One requires a subscription. I used the $15/month plan (750 credits). The interface is user-friendly; you select the driving video and the character image. My tests, using a dog character, yielded mixed results. Facial expressions were sometimes subtle or absent, even with clear expressions in my driving video.

Using custom character images proved difficult; Runway struggled to detect faces in several Dall-E 3 generated images.

However, using human characters yielded much better, higher-fidelity results.

Runway Gen-3 Alpha Integration:

Runway's Gen-3 Alpha, which creates videos from still images and text prompts, complements Act-One. Gen-3 Alpha can generate broader scenes, while Act-One provides detailed close-ups.

Runway ML Python API:

Runway offers a Python API (currently lacking Act-One support, but Gen-3 Alpha is available). This section details API key creation, pricing, setup, and example code for generating videos. The API uses credits separate from subscription credits.

Conclusion:

Act-One shows promise but needs refinement. While the integration with Gen-3 Alpha is compelling, Act-One's current limitations (especially with custom characters) hinder its widespread usability. The Python API provides a powerful alternative for programmatic video generation. Further development is needed to fully realize its potential. For more on AI video generation, check out these posts: Meta Movie Gen Guide, Runway Gen-3 Alpha, Top 7 AI Video Generators, OpenAI's Sora. (Remember to replace bracketed links with actual links.)

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