Seedance 2.0 is Volcengine's video generation foundation model, supporting four input modalities — text, image, audio, and video — and considered one of the current SOTA (best-in-class) commercially usable video generation APIs in China. Aimed at developers, this guide walks the full chain of "call the API, generate your first video" from zero, covering account activation, API calls, result retrieval, object storage configuration, and cost control.

What the Seedance 2.0 API Can Do

• Text-to-video: generate a video from a text description
• Image-to-video: upload one image and bring the scene to life
• Audio/video-to-video: generate new video referencing audio or video material
• Multimodal combined input: mixed text/image/audio/video prompting

The model runs as an async task per request: submit the task → get a task_id → poll the status → receive a video URL (valid for 24 hours, so transfer it promptly).

Video generation is an async task — don't treat the request as a synchronous call, or you'll wedge the client.

Before You Start

Required Accounts and Permissions

• Volcengine account: complete enterprise/individual identity verification
• Ark Foundation Model Platform: enable Seedance 2.0 model permissions (some models require an application)
• API Key: obtain it in the Ark console; it looks like volc-sk-xxx
• TOS bucket (optional but recommended): for stable storage of generated results, avoiding the 24-hour URL expiry problem

Technical Requirements

• Comfortable with HTTP calls in any language (Python/Node.js/Go all work)
• Use the official SDK to simplify request signing
• Estimated first-run time: 30 minutes

Core Documentation

Step by Step

Step 1: Activate the Ark platform and get an API Key

1. Log in to the Volcengine Ark Foundation Model Platform
2. In the "Model Square," find the Seedance 2.0 family and apply to enable it
3. Go to "API Key Management," create a Key, and store it safely (it is shown only once)
4. Note the model ID (it looks like seedance-2.0-xxx); you'll need it for every call

Tip: activation review usually takes 1-3 business days; apply for both the image-to-video and text-to-video variants at the same time.

Step 2: Call the "create video generation task" endpoint

Core endpoint (defer to the official Ark docs):

POST https://ark.cn-beijing.volces.com/api/v3/contents/generations/tasks
Authorization: Bearer {API_KEY}
Content-Type: application/json

Example request body (text-to-video):

{
  "model": "seedance-2.0-text-to-video",
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": "A corgi running across a grassy field, slow motion, backlit by sunlight"
    }
  ],
  "parameters": {
    "duration": 5,
    "resolution": "720p",
    "fps": 24
  }
}

Example response:

{
  "id": "task-xxxxxxxxxxxx"
}

Hold on to that id.

Tip: parameter order and naming defer to the official API reference; fields may change across model version upgrades, so check the latest docs before every integration.

Step 3: Poll the task status and download the video

Poll the query endpoint (every 10-15 seconds is a good interval; a 5-second video usually finishes in 1-3 minutes):

GET https://ark.cn-beijing.volces.com/api/v3/contents/generations/tasks/{task_id}
Authorization: Bearer {API_KEY}

Example success response:

{
  "id": "task-xxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "status": "succeeded",
  "content": {
    "video_url": "https://ark-video-xxx.volces.com/xxx.mp4"
  }
}

Once you have the video_url, download it immediately — the URL is valid for only 24 hours, and task records are queryable for only the last 7 days.

Step 4 (recommended): transfer to TOS object storage

In production, strongly consider copying videos into Volcengine TOS (object storage) to dodge URL expiry:

import requests, tos

# 1. Download
video = requests.get(video_url).content

# 2. Upload to TOS
client = tos.TosClientV2(ak, sk, endpoint, region)
client.put_object(Bucket="your-bucket", Key="videos/corgi.mp4", Body=video)

If you need intra-cloud acceleration, configure a VPC-dedicated network environment to further cut latency and public bandwidth costs.

Step 5: Use the official SDK to simplify calls

Raw HTTP means handling signing yourself; the official SDK is easier:

• Python: pip install volcengine-python-sdk
• Node.js: npm install @volcengine/openapi
• Full multi-language examples: https://www.volcengine.com/docs/82379/2298881

The SDK wraps authentication and retry logic; a few lines of code get you running.

Verifying the Result

Success looks like:

• Task status moves queued → running → succeeded
• An mp4 file downloads from the video_url
• The video's duration and resolution match the request parameters

For a first integration, validate the whole chain with a short prompt (a 5-second video), then ramp up complexity gradually.

Cost and Quota Notes

• Billing: usually billed per second of video; higher resolution costs more per unit — check the Ark console for exact pricing
• Concurrency: new accounts default to low concurrency; request a quota increase before production
• Failed tasks: tasks rejected by content moderation are generally not billed, but failures caused by bad parameters may be partially billed — validate parameters before calling

Common Issues

• Task stuck in queued: check whether the account is in arrears, whether model permissions are enabled, and whether concurrency is maxed out.
• video_url returns 403 / expired: URLs expiring after 24 hours is by design; download or transfer to TOS immediately after receiving the URL.
• Generated content blocked by moderation: Seedance has built-in content safety policies; avoid sensitive words in prompts. Normal business scenarios rarely trigger them.
• Image-to-video output is choppy: first-frame quality is critical; use a source image of at least 720p with a clear, centered subject.
• Want batch generation: use the SDK's async task queue, keep concurrency within quota, and pair it with automatic TOS archiving.

Related Links

• Create task API: https://www.volcengine.com/docs/82379/1520757
• Query task API: https://www.volcengine.com/docs/82379/1521309
• SDK examples: https://www.volcengine.com/docs/82379/2298881
• Full integration guide: https://www.volcengine.com/article/42393