Holiday card video from one family photo: Wan 3.0, 5 seconds, 63 cents

Send the family photo as the first frame to wan-3.0, ask for small motion, and set 5 seconds at 720p. The clip costs $0.63 on Sume, or $0.32 at 480p and $1.25 at 1080p. For a greeting that will be viewed on a phone, 720p is enough.

The less the prompt asks for, the more the faces stay the same. Ask for snow falling, a soft light shift or a slow push-in, not for the people to do anything new.

A request that keeps faces steady

Use frame_images with frame_type: first_frame so the video opens on your real photo (video generation docs). Keep the prompt to the environment.

{
  "model": "wan-3.0",
  "prompt": "Snow falls gently, warm lights twinkle, very slow push-in, people stay still",
  "duration": 5,
  "resolution": "720p",
  "generate_audio": false,
  "frame_images": [{
    "type": "image_url",
    "image_url": {"url": "https://example.com/family.jpg"},
    "frame_type": "first_frame"
  }]
}

Price

Wan 3.0 lists at $0.05, $0.10 and $0.20 per second; Sume bills list times 1.25 and rounds up to the cent (video router docs).

One clip for everyone, not one per person

Generate once and send the same file. Fifty personalized clips cost fifty times as much and each one still needs to be checked by eye. If you want a name on it, add it as text in an editor.

Consent

Only animate photos of people who have agreed to it, and do not use photos of children without a parent's permission. Sume cannot know who is in your photo, so the check is yours. If a result changes a face noticeably, discard it rather than send it.

Practical notes

If a result is close but the faces shifted, try the same photo at a shorter duration. A 3-second clip at 720p is $0.38 and gives less time for drift.

Share the finished video as a file or a link, and keep the original photo so you can make next year's card from the same source.