Seedance 2.5 tests shots in 480p before regenerating them in 1080p

Dreamina Seedance 2.5's Draft Mode lets creators iterate on video concepts in 480p before generating only the selected shot in 1080p. BytePlus claims savings of up to 77% for a five-second final clip after twenty attempts.

Running the experiments at a lower resolution

Finding the right camera movement or character behavior often takes several generations. The new Draft Mode in Dreamina Seedance 2.5 moves that exploration stage to 480p: multiple versions can be generated at lower resolution, then only the selected one is used to produce the final 1080p output.

The draft can be used to check scene structure, shot sequencing, subject motion, and prompt interpretation before paying for the final generation. BytePlus documentation requires 480p for this first step. Using another resolution returns an error. It is not an upscale

Once a shot is selected, Seedance 2.5 does not simply enlarge the 480p video. The system performs a new 1080p generation using the selected Draft task ID.

To preserve continuity between both versions, the model automatically reuses the prompt, image, video and audio references, duration, aspect ratio, seed, audio settings, and task type from the Draft. Those parameters cannot be changed when generating the final version.

BytePlus describes this as preserving a “high degree” of consistency in composition and motion rather than producing an identical copy. The 1080p result remains a newly generated shot, not a mechanically enlarged version of the low-resolution draft.

A selected Draft remains valid for seven days. Within this specific workflow, the final generation currently supports 1080p only. More attempts, wider savings

The economics become more significant as the number of attempts increases. According to BytePlus, producing a five-second final clip with two attempts can cut costs by around 32% compared with generating every attempt directly at final quality. With twenty attempts, the claimed savings rise to 77%.

The Draft Mode therefore does not primarily make the selected final render cheaper. Instead, it reduces the amount of compute spent on versions that will ultimately be discarded.

Draft Mode is available through the BytePlus Seedance 2.5 API. The model also supports videos up to 30 seconds long and as many as 50 multimodal reference assets in a single request.