$5 of lip sync: 50 s on H3 Max 768p, 26 s on Fabric 720p

Five dollars buys 50 audio seconds of MiniMax H3 Max Lip Sync at 768p (5 / 0.10), 80 seconds at 480p (5 / 0.0625), 50 seconds of Fabric at 480p (5 / 0.10) or 26 whole seconds of Fabric at 720p (5 / 0.1875 = 26.67) on Sume (as of 2026-10-09).

The budget table

Because every H3 Max clip is 5 to 14.8 seconds and bills ceil seconds, plan the budget in whole clips as well as seconds.

Turning seconds into clips

Fifty seconds at 768p is three 14-second clips and one 8-second clip, or five 10-second clips. Both plans bill 50 seconds, provided each clip stays within the 5 to 14.8 second window and its duration is a whole number so that ceil adds nothing. Clips with fractional lengths bill upward: five 9.6-second clips are 5 x 10 = 50 billable seconds, while the audio is 48 seconds in total.

For Fabric at 720p, 26 seconds leaves $0.125, which buys 1 more second at 480p but not another 720p second (0.1875). The vendor lists Fabric 720p at $0.15 per second, and 0.15 x 1.25 gives Sume's rate (vendor page read 2026-10-09).

What the same $5 buys across the stack

A talking clip rarely stands alone. Add the voice: Sume text to speech is $0.0475 per 1,000 characters, so a 14-second line of about 200 characters is 0.2 x 0.0475 = $0.0095. Add a render to join clips: $0.10 for up to a minute. A 14-second H3 Max clip at 768p is $1.40; with voice and render the finished piece is about $1.51.

That leaves room for roughly three such pieces from $5.00. Without the render step, nearly all of the budget is the lip-sync line, so the model rate decides the outcome. Switching to 480p cuts the clip to $0.875.

Which to pick for a small budget

For talking clips between 5 and 14.8 seconds, H3 Max Lip Sync at 768p gives the most seconds per dollar at a resolution above 720p-class output. For lines shorter than 5 seconds you must use Fabric, which has no such floor. If you do not know which you will need, spend the first dollar on one 5-second test of each: 5 x 0.10 = $0.50 on H3 Max at 768p and 5 x 0.1875 = $0.9375 on Fabric at 720p.

Whatever you buy, measure the audio first. A file you think is 10 seconds that turns out to be 10.4 bills 11 seconds on H3 Max, so five such clips cost 55 seconds, not 52.

• Whole-second audio avoids rounding loss.
• Do not cut the recorded audio to fit a window; split the script instead.
• Both routes are polled the same way.