How to use draft mode for AI video in 2026
Three Seedance drafts and one 1080p finish cost us $4.62. Rendering all three tries at 1080p would have cost $9.21.
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Most of what a video model makes gets thrown away. You write a prompt, wait a minute or two, watch five seconds, and decide the camera should be lower. At full quality, every one of those tries costs as much as the clip you finally keep.
Draft mode changes the math. Several new video models can now render a quick, low-resolution version of a prompt for a fraction of the price. You explore at draft prices, and when one attempt is right, you pay for full quality once. We tested it on a single idea, a paper boat in a rainy gutter, and this post walks through the numbers and shows how to run the same loop in CSuite.
Draft mode splits a video into a cheap try and a paid finish
A normal render does everything at once. It decides the shot, the motion and the sound, and it draws every frame at the size you asked for. Draft mode does the deciding at a small size and a low price. What comes back is a real video with real audio, just smaller and softer.
What happens next depends on the model. Two of the three models with a draft mode hand back a small receipt with the draft, which you can send back later to ask for the full-quality version of that exact attempt. Seedance 2.5 calls it a draft ID; FLUX 3 calls it a draft cache. The third, P-Video-2, has no finish step. Its draft is a cheaper render, and when you like the prompt you turn draft off and render again, which gives you a new clip rather than a sharper copy of the old one.
That difference matters more than the price. A finish step means the preview you approved becomes the clip you ship. Without one, a draft tests the prompt, not the result.
Three new video models ship a draft mode
Seedance 2.5 is ByteDance’s flagship video model, with synced audio and clips up to 30 seconds; we compared it with the version before it in our Seedance 2.5 tests. FLUX 3 is Black Forest Labs’ video model, launched this summer with native audio. P-Video-2 is Pruna’s low-cost model, and the cheapest of the three even before drafts.
| Model | Draft size | Draft price | Full price | Finish step |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seedance 2.5 | 480p | $0.102/s | $0.23/s at 720p, $0.614/s at 1080p | Yes: the same clip at 1080p |
| FLUX 3 | 720p | $0.04/s | $0.17/s at 720p, $0.29/s at 1080p | Yes: a 1080p render of the draft |
| P-Video-2 | 720p or 1080p | $0.015/s at 720p | $0.025/s at 720p, $0.05/s at 1080p | No: render again with Draft off |
A Seedance 2.5 draft always renders at 480p and bills the 480p rate of $0.102 per second, against $0.614 per second for 1080p. A FLUX 3 draft always renders at 720p for $0.04 per second on Runware, a quarter of the $0.17 a full 720p render costs. Black Forest Labs’ own documentation puts a FLUX 3 draft at about a third of the price of a full render on its own API, with the draft ready in about 61 seconds against 108 for a direct full render. P-Video-2 drafts cost 60% of its normal rate at either size.
In CSuite, drafting is one setting in the Model menu
CSuite runs all three models through your own Runware key, which is where every clip in this post was made. Draft mode sits with the other generation settings, so the whole loop happens in the Video workspace. Here it is with Seedance 2.5, using the clips we made for this post.
Step 1. Turn Draft on
Pick Seedance 2.5 on Runware and open the Model menu. Set Draft to On. Resolution locks to 480p, because Seedance only drafts at that size, and its tooltip says why. The resolution you had picked comes back as soon as Draft is off again.
Step 2. Try the idea several ways
Write the prompt and press Create. Then change the idea and press Create again. We made three versions of one scene: a camera tracking beside the boat, an overhead shot, and a macro close-up. Each draft lands in the file list named after the first words of its prompt, and the info panel shows its size, 854 × 480.
Each draft cost $0.518, came back with sound, and took 64 to 80 seconds; we ran all three at once. This is the part of the loop draft mode is built for. We would have rejected the tracking and overhead shots at any resolution, and at draft prices rejecting them cost about a dollar.
Render in 1080p finishes the draft you picked
Step 3. Render the keeper in 1080p
Select the draft you want and open the AI menu above the preview. Render in 1080p sits at the top, and it only appears on a clip that is a draft. There is nothing to fill in, because the prompt, length and audio all come from the draft.
The finished clip lands next to the draft as a new file, Macro Close Up-1080p. Nothing is replaced, so you can compare the two, and the info panel reads 1920 × 1080 (1080p) on the new one.
The finish took 43.5 seconds and cost $3.068, which is Runware’s published 1080p rate for five seconds. The shot survived intact: the same framing, the same gentle bob, the same rain on the soundtrack. What changed is detail. The folds on the boat are crisp, the ripples have edges, and the grain on the gutter wall reads as texture instead of blur.
One honest note on speed. Our drafts were not quicker than the finish; the three of them ran side by side and each took longer than the 1080p render did on its own. On this run, draft mode saved money, not waiting time.
FLUX 3 finishes in 1080p for less, but can reframe the shot
FLUX 3 works the same way in CSuite. Turn Draft on and Resolution locks to 720p, and the draft gets Render in 1080p in its AI menu. We sent it the macro prompt. The draft came back in 31.5 seconds at 1280 × 704 for $0.20. The finish took 134 seconds and came back at 1920 × 1088 for $0.857, which is the 720p full-quality rate, so it cost less than the $1.45 a direct 1080p render lists at.
Black Forest Labs says the finish keeps “the same subjects, same composition and same motion” as the draft. Ours kept the boat, the dusk light, the bokeh and the rain, but the camera dropped lower and the boat moved to the left of the frame. The finish itself is repeatable: two runs from the same draft gave us the same clip, frame for frame. It just was not the preview’s framing. With FLUX 3, judge a draft on its subject, look and motion, and expect the exact framing to shift.
In CSuite, the FLUX 3 finish runs on Runware. On Black Forest Labs’ own API and on Replicate, a FLUX 3 draft is a preview only. P-Video-2 drafts have no finish step, so use them the other way round: test prompts at $0.015 a second, then turn Draft off, keep the prompt, and render the keeper fresh.
In a composition, a draft layer finishes in place
Drafts earn the most in a longer edit. In a composition you can generate every shot as a draft, cut the sequence together, and finish only the shots that survive the edit. Select a draft layer and the inspector’s Generate with AI section shows Render in 1080p beside the extend actions.
Here the finished clip replaces the draft on the same layer, with the same timing and position, and ⌘Z puts the draft back. Scale that up to a 30-second piece of six 5-second shots with three tries each. Eighteen Seedance drafts cost about $9.32 and six finishes $18.41, so $27.73 in all. Rendering all eighteen tries at 1080p would cost $55.26. The idea-to-video pipeline post covers the rest of that workflow, from script to sound.
Drafting pays for itself from the second try
The finish is not a discount. For Seedance 2.5 it bills at the full 1080p rate, so if your first attempt is always the keeper, drafting adds $0.52 to every clip. The saving comes from the attempts you throw away: each one costs $0.52 instead of $3.07. Two tries is where drafting starts to win, and by three it has halved the bill.
FLUX 3 came out further ahead, because its finish billed at the 720p rate while delivering 1080p. One draft plus one finish came to $1.06, against $1.45 for a single direct 1080p render, so drafting won even on the first try. That is one test on one platform on one day; prices and billing tiers move, so check the live rate before you plan a budget on it.
Our rule after this test is simple. When you are still deciding what the shot is, draft. When you already know exactly what you want, or a start frame is locking the composition for you, render at full quality directly. And in a longer piece, draft everything, edit, and finish only what makes the cut.
