Bring Your Still Images to Life: A Beginner's Guide to Midjourney Video

Midjourney’s video tool has recently come out and it is already making it easier to create animated images. It supports many styles. But how exactly do you use it? What settings can you pick to make your idea happen? This guide will give you a quick lesson on using this new tool. Let's begin.

Accessing Midjourney Video Features

To use Midjourney’s video features, you must use the website version. Go to midjourney.com. You cannot do this in the Discord version. Using the website is a good idea anyway, as it has many more features than the Discord bot.

First, go to the explore page on the Midjourney website. Then click on “videos.” Scroll through to see examples of what people have made. This can give you ideas and show you what is possible. If you click on a video, you can see the prompt that was used to make it.

Starting Your Animation: From Image to Video

Making a video in Midjourney needs a starting image. This can be an image you made in Midjourney or one you uploaded. Let’s start by making an image in Midjourney, then we will animate it.

Creating a New Image for Animation

Go to the "Create" tab. Type your image idea into the prompt bar. For example, “a skeleton punk rocker playing guitar.” Submit your prompt. This is the usual way to make an image in Midjourney. Once you have your four image results, pick one that you want to animate.

Understanding Animation Options

On the right side, you will see options to animate your image. Clicking any of these buttons starts an animation job. Here is what these options mean:

• Motion Options:

• Low motion keeps the image fairly steady. It tries not to move the camera or the main subject much.

• High motion gives you more dynamic action. The camera and subject can move more.

• Prompt Options:

• Auto means Midjourney creates the video without you typing extra text.

• Manual lets you add new text to guide the video’s motion. For example, you could add “a dragon flies across the sky.”

When you start a video job, it will show as running in your “Create” tab. Just like making an image, you will get four video results for each submission.

Extending Your Video Clips

Once your video is made, you can extend it. This adds another 4 seconds to the video. You can extend it up to four times. With an original 5-second video, you can get a total video of 21 seconds. These extension options let you set the same parameters:

• You can choose the motion level (low or high).

• You can let it auto-generate or manually type a new prompt, such as “explosions in the sky.”

The timeline below the video shows the extended part. It loops back to the beginning. To help automate and improve your Midjourney creations, consider trying the Midjourney Automation Suite from TitanXT. It can help streamline your workflow.

Using Existing Images for Midjourney Video

You can make videos from almost any image. Just drag it to the prompt bar. This works for images you find on the Midjourney site or those from elsewhere.

Animating Images from Midjourney Explore

On the explore page, go to the images tab. If you see an image you like while scrolling, click and drag it up to the prompt bar. You can add text to it, or just submit it as is to create a video job.

Animating External Images

• Copy and Paste: You can copy images from websites (like Unsplash) and paste them directly into the prompt bar. Drag the pasted image to the "starting frame" area to make it a video. You can then add text like "moving planets, galaxy spirals" to guide the animation.

• Upload Your Own: Click "add images," choose a file from your computer, and drag it to the "starting frame" area.

In the settings, you can also change the motion level for these external images before you submit the job.

Downloading and Sharing Your Midjourney Videos

To download a video, right-click on it and choose from the download options: Social, Raw video, and GIF.

Understanding Download Formats: RAW, Social, GIF

• Raw Video: This is the original file Midjourney made. It will match the aspect ratio you see on the Midjourney website. For example, a 3x2 video might download as 768x512 pixels. This resolution might be too low for some social media platforms.

• Social: This version is upscaled to a higher resolution. Midjourney added this because some platforms were not accepting the low-resolution raw files. While it's higher resolution, remember it was enlarged from the original, so the true quality might vary. However, it should work on most social media platforms.

• GIF: You can also download your video as a looping GIF.

Midjourney works to improve these quality and resolution settings, so expect them to get better over time.

Understanding Midjourney Video Costs and Plans

Midjourney uses GPU hours for its services. Your subscription plan comes with a set number of GPU hours. For example, the standard plan has 15 hours, and the pro plan has 30 hours.

Making an image takes about 1 minute of GPU time. Creating a video takes about eight times more, so around 8 minutes of GPU time. These are estimates and might change as the system develops.

Relaxed Mode for Cost Savings

A great part of the pro plan and others is that you can have unlimited relaxed image and video generations. In relaxed mode, your jobs take longer, but the cost is lower. You can turn on relaxed mode in the “Create” menu by clicking settings and enabling “Relax.”

In relaxed mode, a video might take about 4 minutes to generate. This time can depend on the time of day and how busy the servers are. This makes Midjourney a very affordable way to make AI videos right now. We hope the cost will go down even more in the future.

Ready to make your Midjourney video workflow even easier? Check out the Midjourney Automation Suite from TitanXT to boost your creative process.

Have you used Midjourney video? What do you think of it? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.