A maker built 30-second AI short documentaries
InstantVideos.org is an experiment that creates short documentary-style videos in about 30 seconds. The workflow links several AI tools together. Claude had already been used to make videos, including a pipeline that could generate videos and post them to TikTok automatically.
In this newer speed test, writes the script and s, and creates the images. creates the narration, and ffmpeg turns the images and audio into a finished video with a slow zoom effect. Video assembly became the main slowdown, so a 64 vCPU EC2 server was used to speed it up.
Each short video costs about 25 cents, and almost 90% of that cost comes from . Each image costs 3.336 cents, while the large 64-core server also adds a meaningful cost.
Key points
- A short documentary-style video can be generated in about 30 seconds.
- handles scripts and s, handles images, and handles narration.
- ffmpeg assembles the video and adds a slow zoom effect, though the effect still has some shake.
- Video assembly was the bottleneck, so a 64 vCPU EC2 server was used to make it faster.
- Each short video costs about 25 cents, with almost 90% of the cost coming from images.