MLA 027 AI Video End-to-End Workflow

How to maintain character consistency, style consistency, etc in an AI video. Prosumers can use Google Veo 3’s "High-Quality Chaining" for fast social media content. Indie filmmakers can achieve narrative consistency by combining Midjourney V7 for style, Kling for lip-synced dialogue, and Runway Gen-4 for camera control, while professional studios gain full control with a layered ComfyUI pipeline to output multi-layer EXR files for standard VFX compositing. Links Notes and resources at ocdevel.com/mlg/mla-27 Try a walking desk - stay healthy & sharp while you learn & code Descript - my favorite AI audio/video editor AI Audio Tool Selection Music: Use Suno for complete songs or Udio for high-quality components for professional editing. Sound Effects: Use ElevenLabs' SFX for integrated podcast production or SFX Engine for large, licensed asset libraries for games and film. Voice: ElevenLabs gives the most realistic voice output. Murf.ai offers an all-in-one studio for marketing, and Play.ht has a low-latency API for developers. Open-Source TTS: For local use, StyleTTS 2 generates human-level speech, Coqui's XTTS-v2 is best for voice cloning from minimal input, and Piper TTS is a fast, CPU-friendly option. I. Prosumer Workflow: Viral Video Goal: Rapidly produce branded, short-form video for social media. This method bypasses Veo 3's weaker native "Extend" feature. Toolchain Image Concept: GPT-4o (API: GPT-Image-1) for its strong prompt adherence, text rendering, and conversational refinement. Video Generation: Google Veo 3 for high single-shot quality and integrated ambient audio. Soundtrack: Udio for creating unique, "viral-style" music. Assembly: CapCut for its standard short-form editing features. Workflow Create Character Sheet (GPT-4o): Generate a primary character image with a detailed "locking" prompt, then use conversational follow-ups to create variations (poses, expressions) for visual consistency. Generate Video (Veo 3): Use "High-Quality Chaining." Clip 1: Generate an 8s clip from a character sheet image. Extract Final Frame: Save the last frame of Clip 1. Clip 2: Use the extracted frame as the image input for the next clip, using a "this then that" prompt to continue the action. Repeat as needed. Create Music (Udio): Use Manual Mode with structured prompts ([Genre: ...], [Mood: ...]) to generate and extend a music track. Final Edit (CapCut): Assemble clips, layer the Udio track over Veo's ambient audio, add text, and use "Auto Captions." Export in 9:16. II. Indie Filmmaker Workflow: Narrative Shorts Goal: Create cinematic short films with consistent characters and storytelling focus, using a hybrid of specialized tools. Toolchain Visual Foundation: Midjourney V7 to establish character and style with --cref and --sref parameters. Dialogue Scenes: Kling for its superior lip-sync and character realism. B-Roll/Action: Runway Gen-4 for its Director Mode camera controls and Multi-Motion Brush. Voice Generation: ElevenLabs for emotive, high-fidelity voices. Edit & Color: DaVinci Resolve for its integrated edit, color, and VFX suite and favorable cost model. Workflow Create Visual Foundation (Midjourney V7): Generate a "hero" character image. Use its URL with --cref --cw 100 to create consistent character poses and with --sref to replicate the visual style in other shots. Assemble a reference set. Create Dialogue Scenes (ElevenLabs -> Kling): Generate the dialogue track in ElevenLabs and download the audio. In Kling, generate a video of the character from a reference image with their mouth closed. Use Kling's "Lip Sync" feature to apply the ElevenLabs audio to the neutral video for a perfect match. Create B-Roll (Runway Gen-4): Use reference images from Midjourney. Apply precise camera moves with Director Mode or add localized, layered motion to static scenes with the Multi-Motion Brush. Assemble & Grade (DaVinci Resolve): Edit clips and audio on the Edit page. On the Color page, use node-based tools to match shots from Kling and Runway, then apply a final creative look. III. Professional Studio Workflow: Full Control Goal: Achieve absolute pixel-level control, actor likeness, and integration into standard VFX pipelines using an open-source, modular approach. Toolchain Core Engine: ComfyUI with Stable Diffusion models (e.g., SD3, FLUX). VFX Compositing: DaVinci Resolve (Fusion page) for node-based, multi-layer EXR compositing. Control Stack & Workflow Train Character LoRA: Train a custom LoRA on a 15-30 image dataset of the actor in ComfyUI to ensure true likeness. Build ComfyUI Node Graph: Construct a generation pipeline in this order: Loaders: Load base model, custom character LoRA, and text prompts (with LoRA trigger word). ControlNet Stack: Chain multiple ControlNets to define structure (e.g., OpenPose for skeleton, Depth map for 3D layout). IPAdapter-FaceID: Use the Plus v2 model as a final reinforcement layer to lock facial identity before animation. AnimateDiff: Apply deterministic camera motion using Motion LoRAs (e.g., v2_lora_PanLeft.ckpt). KSampler -> VAE Decode: Generate the image sequence. Export Multi-Layer EXR: Use a node like mrv2SaveEXRImage to save the output as an EXR sequence (.exr). Configure for a professional pipeline: 32-bit float, linear color space, and PIZ/ZIP lossless compression. This preserves render passes (diffuse, specular, mattes) in a single file. Composite in Fusion: In DaVinci Resolve, import the EXR sequence. Use Fusion's node graph to access individual layers, allowing separate adjustments to elements like color, highlights, and masks before integrating the AI asset into a final shot with a background plate.