Seedance video prompting

ByteDance's Seedance family generates video and audio jointly and takes multimodal references (images, video clips, audio clips) that a prompt addresses by label. Getting the labels and the task type right matters more than adjectives: the same sentence can be read as "reference this" or "edit this" depending on one word.

Load reference.md for the full formulas, the failure table, worked examples and the ComfyUI parameters. Load supplementary.md only for non-official leads about 2.5; it never overrides reference.md and carries a conflict ledger. This file is the router and the rules you need before writing a single line.

Which model you are talking to

Model	Where it runs	Refs per pass	Max length	In ComfyUI
Seedance 2.5	Dreamina, Jimeng AI, Doubao Pro, and ComfyUI since core v0.31.0	30 img + 10 video + 10 audio (audio-only allowed)	4 to 30s; nest-extend to 60s; Long Video mode 30 to 180s in one shot	Yes, since 2026-08-08
Seedance 2.0 / 2.0 Mini / 2.0 Fast	BytePlus ModelArk, ComfyUI	9 img + 3 video + 3 audio	15s	Yes
Seedance 1.5 Pro	BytePlus ModelArk, ComfyUI	n/a (no omni-reference)	4 to 12s, min 4s enforced	Yes, and the only one there with generate_audio
Seedance 1.0 Lite / Pro / Pro Fast	BytePlus ModelArk, ComfyUI	n/a	n/a	Yes

Seedance 2.5 reached ComfyUI on 2026-08-08 (core v0.31.0, PR 15395), and this file said the opposite until 2026-08-09. The old line, "Seedance 2.5 has no ComfyUI nodes", was correct on 2026-08-01 and went stale a week later. Kept as a correction rather than silently replaced.

How to build it now. 2.5 is a model option inside the SAME ByteDance2* nodes, not new nodes: ByteDance2TextToVideoNode, ByteDance2FirstLastFrameNode, ByteDance2ReferenceNode (category partner/video/ByteDance). Set the model DynamicCombo to Seedance 2.5 and the widgets underneath change. Minimal graph: the node's VIDEO output straight into SaveVideo.video.

What ComfyUI's 2.5 gives you, read from comfy_api_nodes/nodes_bytedance.py on master (2026-08-09), not from the announcement:

• resolution is 480p or 720p only. There is no 1080p and no 4K on 2.5 in ComfyUI; those live on the Seedance 2.0 option of the same node.
• duration 4 to 30 s, ratio 16:9 / 4:3 / 1:1 / 3:4 / 9:16 / 21:9 / adaptive (the first-last-frame node has no ratio widget), generate_audio on by default, output_format mp4 only even though the node's own model tooltip advertises "mp4/mov".
• ByteDance2ReferenceNode autogrows to 30 images, 10 videos, 10 audios, which confirms the announcement's 30+10+10 in code. Its video_editing toggle makes the output inherit the source clip's duration and aspect, and the duration / ratio widgets are then ignored.
• Node-level prompting rule: put spoken lines in double quotes to steer the generated dialogue.
• The Long Video 30 to 180 s mode in the table above is a Dreamina / Jimeng feature and is not reachable through these nodes, whose ceiling is 30 s. Nest-extend instead.

The three task types, and the word that switches between them

Every Seedance prompt is one of three tasks, and the model decides which from your phrasing:

Task	Phrasing	Result
Multimodal reference	"Reference <Subject_N> in <Image_N> to generate..."	brand-new video borrowing an element
Video editing	"Strictly edit <Video_N>, and modify X to Y"	the original video, partially changed
Video extension	"Extend <Video_N> forward/backward to generate..."	the original continued in time

The trap: for edit and extend, name the asset as <Video_N> directly. Writing "reference <Video_N>" makes the model treat it as a reference task and generate something new instead of editing what you gave it. (Confirmed, official BytePlus guide.)

Reference labels

Official ByteDance examples write @Image 1, @Video 1, @Audio 1 with a space. Dreamina's consumer guide shows @Image1 without one. Both appear in the wild; the official form is spaced. Do not invent other label shapes.

Two ways to name a subject, and you must pick one and keep it:

• Bind inline: <Subject_N>@<Image_N>, e.g. Zhang San@Image 1, repeated every single time the subject is mentioned.
• Define once, then reuse the label: "define the tall man in Video 1 as police officer", then say "police officer" consistently forever after.

Define a subject with 2 to 3 stable static features (clothing, hairstyle, category), never with mood or action. Every mention must be explicit; an unlabelled mention is where subjects get swapped.

Four symbols that carry meaning

Officially documented, and nothing else does their job:

Content	Symbol	Example
Music	（）	（fast-paced rock music is playing）
Sound effect	<>	<dog barking in the distance>
Dialogue	{}	{Hello, world}
Subtitles	【】	【Chapter One: Departure】

Non-Chinese, non-English dialogue must name its language: says in Japanese {こんにちは}.

Shot sequencing beats prose

Write a storyboard, not a paragraph. Label segments Shot 1, Shot 2, Shot 3 in the order events happen, and give each one: camera move or transition, subject action and expression, position or spatial change, audio.

Timing depends on the version, and this reversed in 2.5.

• 2.0: do not force timings. The official 2.0 guide says support for precise timing such as "0 to 3 seconds" is unstable and constraining duration can break the generation.
• 2.5: timestamps are a headline feature, built because users asked for exactly this. Write time slices as 0s-3s:, 3s-8s: and direct each one. See reference.md section 2.5-C.

One camera movement per shot. Asking for push, pull, pan and track at once destabilises the image.

Do not fill the reference budget

The single most counterintuitive official rule. 2.5 accepts 50 assets; the guide recommends 4 to 5: 1-2 character images (headshot plus full body) + 1 scene image + 1 camera-movement video + 1 audio clip. Too many assets and the model cannot rank features, producing style conflicts and blurred subjects.

Place the assets that need the most faithful reference earliest in the prompt.

When something comes out wrong

Symptom	First fix
Face drifts or swaps mid-video	Add a separate headshot reference; never use multi-view character sheets, they read as several people
Two identical characters appear	Label every character to its image, plus a global "no duplicate characters" constraint
Subtitles you never asked for	Add "avoid generating any text or subtitles"; prefer landscape, portrait is markedly worse
A watermark or logo appears	Add "do not generate a watermark", "do not generate a logo"
Style drifts to live action	State the style explicitly; better, convert the reference image to the target style first
Jump at an extension seam	Post fix: trim 6 frames off the end of the earlier clip and 1 frame off the start of the next

Full causes, the rest of the table and the ComfyUI-specific limits are in reference.md.

Sources and honesty

Normative content here comes from ByteDance primary sources: the official BytePlus ModelArk prompt guide for the Seedance 2.0 series, the official Seed blog announcing 2.5 (2026-07-31), Dreamina's official product guide, and ComfyUI's own node source. Third-party writing is kept out of the normative layer and lives in supplementary.md, subordinate and with its conflicts listed.

The detailed prompting rules are the official 2.0-series guide. Seedance 2.5 launched 2026-07-31 and has no public prompting guide of its own yet; it inherits the mechanics visibly, but treat 2.5-specific numbers as the only part confirmed for 2.5. reference.md marks every claim.