A few weeks ago we reported on Runway Gen-2. This is an online text-to-video conversion tool that generates a 4-second clip based on your prompts. Until now, this free service was only available in a closed beta operated through a series of private channels on Runway’s Discord server. However, as of today, Gen-2 is available to everyone and can be used from the company’s his website instead of Discord.
To use Runway Gen-2 you need to create a free account. runway website and navigate to app.runwayml.com/ai-tools/gen-2 Go to Tools (or click the Control Panel link there). The company has been making its Gen-1 tools available to everyone for months now to modify existing videos to change their appearance (e.g. turn humans into claymation), but with Gen-2 it’s called “beer A simple text prompt such as “Robot to drink” is displayed. and turn them into clips.
As mentioned in our previous article on Gen-2, video clips often have no sound at all and very limited movement. Clips can be downloaded in MP4 format, but often look like animated GIFs. I’ve converted all the clips embedded in this article to GIFs for viewing, and the smoothness doesn’t seem to be affected.
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You can also upload a photo and tell Gen-2 to use that image as inspiration. I uploaded a headshot of myself and asked them to show me “this guy drinking beer”.
The person in the video looks a lot like me. He is a middle-aged bald white man with a salt and pepper beard and shiny green glasses. But he doesn’t really drink beer. I’m not sure what he’s got in his mouth.
After entering the prompt (possibly a picture),[生成]Click the button and the tool will tell you if you are in a queue waiting to process requests. Then you’ll see a percentage of how complete the video is. In my testing, it always took less than a minute from entering the prompt to completing the video. This is consistent with what we experienced when using the Gen-2 beta, but in that case sending a prompt to the Discord bot would not show a progress percentage, instead just send the video back. will be About a minute later.
Once the video is complete, it will appear on your screen and you can play it on the fly or download it as an MP4 file with the click of a button. It is also stored in the assets section of your account.
Unlike the Gen-2 beta, there seems to be a limit to the number of videos you can generate for free. My free account has a video limit of 60 seconds with 4 seconds per clip, which is 15 clips.
If you run out of credits or want additional features such as upscaling (high definition) or videos without runway watermarks, pay $15 per month for a standard account or $144 per year for a one-time payment is needed. . For that price, you get 125 seconds of video per month, and you can watch more for an additional fee.
I’ve spent a lot of time playing with Gen-2 since I accessed the private beta a few weeks ago. I was impressed that many of the clips were very good, but they were very inconsistent, with strange eye expressions on people, deformed body parts, and the uncanny valley. It may look like it came straight out of the
For better or worse, the tool is very bad at recreating certain characters. On various occasions I have been asked to make videos for Blue from the cartoon characters Peppa Pig, Paddington Bear and Blue’s Cruz. They resemble those characters, usually cartoon-like, but the resemblance is not very accurate. Certain images of the photorealistic Peppa Pig are truly creepy and look like they were ripped out of a horror movie.
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You can also forget to ask about the company logo. I’ve asked several times to make a video using the Tom’s Hardware name and logo, but gibberish appears instead.
However, one thing Runway Gen-2 is really good at is generating images of robots drinking alcoholic beverages and doing other “bar” things. Every time I asked the robot to drink, smoke, dance, pour beer, or wash my hands in the men’s only room at the bar, I got pretty decent output. We also got some good clips of stand-up comedy and robots singing in the lounge. Whether asking for a robot to play billiards, foosball or darts at a bar was rather a mixed bag.
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Other areas of success I’ve found include family meals together and time-lapse views of cities and natural landscapes.
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Despite Runway Gen-2’s limitations, we’ve seen very creative people stitch together many clips into longer movies. Perhaps the most famous example of a Runway Gen-2 movie is the Pepperoni Hug Spot his commercial pizza commercial, produced by a creator named Pizza Later. Pizza then teamed up with his friend to create a commercial for a false flatulence drug called FlatuLess. This is embedded below.
Note that the music and narration were created with other AI tools, and all clips were stitched together by humans using Adobe After Effects. The clip looks like it’s from an old commercial because Pizza Later used it. Red Giant VHS Filter on them.
If you want to give Runway Gen-2 a try and see what you can create with it, visit: runwayml.com And sign up for a free account.
