Quick answer: draft at 480P for one credit a second, review in bulk, then finish only the selects at 1080P for three. Twelve five-second drafts plus three ten-second finals is 150 credits, about $1.50. Rendering those drafts at 1080P and keeping the same finals costs 270 credits, or $2.70.
Thirty seconds of finished video is usually described as a budget problem. For this model it is a pipeline problem: twelve five-second candidates followed by three ten-second finals cost about $2.70 if you draft at 1080P and about $1.50 if you draft at 480P.
The arithmetic is not clever, but the workflow around it is where projects either save money or waste it, so here is the whole loop with real numbers.
Stage 1 — draft at 480P
480P is one credit per second. Five-second drafts cost five credits each.
| Drafts | Length | Credits | Dollars |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | 5 s | 60 | $0.60 |
| 20 | 5 s | 100 | $1.00 |
| 30 | 5 s | 150 | $1.50 |
Twelve drafts at $0.60 is less than a single ten-second 2K clip. That is the whole argument for a cheap drafting tier: the cost of being wrong drops below the cost of thinking about it.
What you are testing at this stage: framing, blocking, the direction of camera moves, whether a prompt produces the kind of shot you imagined. Not grade, not detail, not lip precision.
Stage 2 — finish the selects at 1080P
1080P is three credits per second, ten seconds maximum.
| Selects | Length | Credits | Dollars |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 10 s | 90 | $0.90 |
| 5 | 10 s | 150 | $1.50 |
Total for twelve drafts and three finals: 150 credits, about $1.50. The same twelve five-second candidates at 1080P cost 180 credits before the same 90-credit final pass: 270 credits in total.
The part that actually saves money: deciding in the right stage
Each stage is cheap for some decisions and expensive for others.
Decide in stage 1 (cheap):
- which take has the right energy;
- whether the camera move reads at all;
- whether the subject stays on-model;
- if a prompt produces a shot at all.
Decide in stage 2 (unavoidable):
- grade and contrast;
- fine texture, skin, fabric;
- whether the shot cuts against the neighbours at full size;
- anything that only appears at 1920 pixels wide.
The common mistake is the reverse: grading a 480P draft, or re-rolling a fifth time at 1080P because the framing was wrong. For equal duration, framing is a stage-1 decision and costs a third as much there.
Time, not just credits
Credits are the cheap axis. Wall-clock is the one that breaks a schedule: on the runs measured in our atlas, a 768P five-second render came back in roughly one to two and a half minutes, while the 1080P first pass took between five and eight minutes for the same five seconds.
Twelve drafts do not run one after another in a real session — you queue several and review them together — but the ratio holds, and it is the reason the loop is: batch drafts, review in bulk, finish three.
Assembly
Three ten-second finals do not make thirty seconds. In practice you generate slightly over, cut to beat, and use the extra headroom for handles. If the piece has narration, pad the audio to the target duration before you generate the shot that carries it, so the model is not asked to fit a 6.2-second line into five seconds.
When is this pipeline the wrong one?
The shot must be 1440P or 2K. Then there is no cheap draft of the same shot; draft at 768P with the same reference and prompt, accept that the final will differ in detail, and budget the difference.
The piece is one hero shot. A single six-second 2K shot is 60 credits; generating three drafts of it at 2K to choose is 180. Here it is cheaper to iterate at 768P and accept one re-roll at the top tier.
You need exact continuity between shots. Drafting at 480P changes how much reference detail survives, which can hide continuity problems that only appear at delivery size. Test continuity on one pair at full size before committing the rest.
FAQ
What should I decide at 480P? Framing, blocking, the direction of camera moves, and whether a prompt produces the shot you imagined.
What has to wait for 1080P? Grade and contrast, fine texture, and whether the shot cuts against its neighbours at full size.
How long does a render take? In our measured runs a 768P five-second clip returned in roughly one to two and a half minutes; a 1080P first pass took five to eight for the same five seconds.
Where this runs
All six tiers, with per-second rates and the ten-second cost for each, are on the rate card at https://callirra.com/minimax-h3. The timings quoted above are from the run logs published with our H3 video atlas.
I work on Callirra, so treat the prices as billed rates rather than list prices from a third party. If your own timings differ materially — different region, different hour — that is worth posting; queue time is the number nobody publishes.