I compared 5 AI tools for generating short videos — here is what actually worked

Hey everyone, been testing a bunch of AI video tools lately so thought I’d share some quick real-world impressions.

I’ve been focusing on short-form videos (15–60s), character consistency, and how workable the workflow actually is for real projects, not just demo clips.

Tools I tried: Seedance, Kling, Runway Gen-3, HappyHorse, Veo 3, plus a few others I dropped pretty fast.

Main takeaway so far: most tools can produce impressive individual shots, but the moment you try to build something consistent across scenes, things start breaking. The difference between “looks good” and “actually usable” is still pretty big.

Right now I’ve ended up with a simple pipeline instead of relying on one tool: script via ChatArt, storyboard with image generation, then video generation. It’s not fully automated, but it’s way more stable than forcing everything through a single model.