Claude Motion has no AI people: a 30-second Sume presenter costs $5.52

If you want a human-looking presenter next to a Claude Motion explainer, you need another tool: per Anthropic's announcement, Motion does not use a video generation model, so it produces no generated footage and no AI-generated people. Sume's avatar video endpoint can make a 30-second presenter clip for $5.52 on the standard tier, $7.35 on plus and $16.50 on max, after a one-time $0.95 to create the avatar.

This post does the arithmetic and shows how the two clips fit together. It does not claim Sume edits a Motion file; the join is a Timeline render over two MP4s.

What each side does

Claude Motion writes code that animates text, charts, shapes and images. You edit it in its editor or by asking Claude, then download an MP4. It is in beta on Team and Enterprise plans, according to the announcement.

Sume's avatar video takes a script and returns a talking presenter. The docs give a script length of 4 to 60 seconds per job, so a 30-second segment fits one job.

The price of a 30-second presenter

Avatar video bills per output second. The three tiers and the arithmetic for 30 seconds are below.

Putting the two clips together

Use the explainer as the main picture and the presenter as an intro or outro. Sume's Timeline render joins video slots into one MP4 at $0.10 per output minute, rounded up, so a 60-second combined file bills $0.10. Timeline sources must live on media.sume.com, so import the Motion MP4 first with POST /v1/media-imports.

A 30-second presenter on the standard tier plus a $0.10 join comes to $5.52 + $0.10 = $5.62, not counting the $0.95 avatar creation, which you pay once and reuse across scripts.

A month of weekly updates

Suppose the same host introduces a weekly metrics explainer for four weeks. Each intro is 30 seconds on the standard tier: 4 x $5.52 = $22.08. Add the avatar creation once, $0.95, and the Timeline joins at 4 x $0.10 = $0.40. The month comes to $22.08 + $0.95 + $0.40 = $23.43.

On the plus tier the same month is 4 x $7.35 = $29.40, so $29.40 + $0.95 + $0.40 = $30.75. The difference between tiers is $7.32 over the month, which is the number to weigh against whatever quality gain you see in a test clip. Run one 4-second script on each tier first; at the standard rate that test is 4 x $0.184 = $0.736.

When not to add a presenter

If the explainer is a chart walkthrough for a board deck, a presenter adds cost without adding information. Anthropic's own examples are a quarterly report as a 30-second explainer, a chart animation and a product walkthrough for onboarding, and none of them needs a face. Add a presenter when the viewer should recognize a person, such as a weekly update from the same host.

Keep the presenter script short. Every extra second is billed at the tier rate, and the docs cap one job at 60 seconds, so longer segments mean several jobs.