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Getting a strong LongLive-2.0 result comes down to writing each prompt as a dense, cinematic paragraph, and composing those prompts into a sequence of shots and cuts. A sequence opens on a scene, evolves it with soft shots, and breaks to new scenes with hard cuts, which can be fired live or scheduled in advance. This guide covers the dense-paragraph prompt, the shot-vs-cut decision, scheduling, a cookbook of worked sequences, and the common mistakes to avoid.

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Where it shines

LongLive-2.0 is strongest with prompts that focus on natural environments, landscapes, and animals (savannas, oceans, forests, weather, wildlife) and on cinematic camera language. It is also unusually sensitive to prompt density: terse prompts produce visibly weaker, less stable video. Write a full, descriptive paragraph, not a phrase.

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Weak vs strong prompts

The fastest way to understand a strong prompt is to compare it to a weak one. Each pair uses the same subject; the only difference is the level of detail. Wildlife scene
A tiger walking through grass.
A powerful Bengal tiger prowls slowly through tall sun-bleached savanna grass at golden hour, the muscles rolling beneath its orange-and-black striped fur, amber eyes fixed dead ahead, whiskers and breath catching the light. Warm low sunlight rakes through the swaying grass and backlights drifting seed-fluff in the air. Long telephoto lens, very shallow depth of field, slow tracking dolly moving alongside the cat, rich golden-amber palette, exquisitely fine fur detail, photoreal nature-documentary look.
Landscape & character scene
An astronaut on a red planet.
A lone astronaut in a worn white-and-orange pressure suit walks slowly across a vast windswept dune of deep rust-red sand, fine dust streaming off the crest and trailing from each heavy boot-step. Golden sunlight rakes across the surface from the left, carving long soft shadows down the ripples; a pale ringed planet hangs low and enormous on the dusty horizon. Wide cinematic establishing shot on a long lens, shallow depth of field, gentle slow dolly, warm crimson-and-amber palette, volumetric haze, photoreal, 35mm film look.

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Anatomy of a prompt

A strong prompt gets its density from specifics. Name each of these, in this rough order:
  • Subject + specific detail: not “a tiger” but “a Bengal tiger, muscles rolling under striped fur”.
  • Action: what it’s doing right now (“prowls slowly”, “leaps clear of the water”).
  • Setting + time of day: “tall savanna grass at golden hour”.
  • Lighting, by its effect: “warm low sunlight rakes through the grass”, not a temperature value.
  • Lens + camera move: “long telephoto, shallow depth of field, slow tracking dolly”. LongLive-2.0 responds strongly to camera language.
  • Color palette & texture: “rich golden-amber palette, fine fur detail”.
  • A render cue: “photoreal”, “cinematic”, “nature-documentary look”.
Two rules on top of the recipe:
  • One coherent idea per shot. Don’t pack a whole scene change into it (that’s a cut).
  • Re-establish the scene on soft shots. When you set_shot mid-scene, restate the subject and setting so continuity holds; only the new change should land.

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Shots vs cuts: the core decision

LongLive-2.0 provides two kinds of prompt-transitions. A shot (set_shot) keeps the camera rolling: it takes the current image and evolves it with no hard break (this is simlilar to the continuous morph Helios produces between prompts). The subject and setting carry over, so only the new change lands. A cut (scene_cut) is the opposite, a hard break that purges memory and builds a new scene from scratch, with no carry-over from what came before. A shot stays inside the current scene and spends its 48-chunk budget (~58s), so it can’t make the video any longer; a cut resets the budget to a fresh 48 chunks, which is the only way to run past a single scene.
Shot (set_shot)Cut (scene_cut)
FeelEvolves the current takeA hard break
MemoryPreserved, continuity holdsPurged, starts from scratch
Chunk budgetSpends the current scene’s budgetResets it (fresh 48 chunks)
Use forCamera moves, action, time-of-day, evolving a momentA new scene: location, subject, or look
See Chunks, scenes, and length for why a scene maxes out at 48 chunks and a cut is what extends it.

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Scheduling a sequence

Beyond firing transitions live, you can schedule them at chunk indices (session_chunk) with schedule_shot / schedule_scene_cut. A chunk is ~1.2s. Keep each scene’s prompts inside its 48-chunk budget. If you want a prompt to land after chunk 48, put a cut before it; otherwise the first scene completes and the later prompt never fires.

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Cookbook

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Shot chain: evolving one scene

A single scene, evolved with soft shots. Maxes out at ~58s. 
await longlive.setShot({ prompt: "A chef plates a dish in a sunlit restaurant kitchen, close-up" });
await longlive.scheduleShot({
  prompt: "Camera pushes in on the steam rising off the plate",
  at_session_chunk: 14,
});
await longlive.scheduleShot({
  prompt: "The chef garnishes with herbs, hands in frame",
  at_session_chunk: 30,
});
await longlive.start();
What you’ll see: continuous action in one kitchen; the dish and lighting stay consistent. Pitfall: without a cut, generation ends near chunk 48; don’t schedule beyond it.

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Cut chain: a nature-documentary montage

Rapid scheduled cuts across animals in natural settings, LongLive-2.0’s sweet spot. This is the sequence shipped in the reference example (prompts abbreviated here for readability; keep yours dense per Weak vs strong prompts). 
await longlive.setShot({
  prompt:
    "A powerful Bengal tiger prowls through tall savanna grass at golden hour, telephoto, shallow depth of field, photoreal",
});
await longlive.scheduleSceneCut({
  prompt:
    "A pod of dolphins leaping through a glittering turquoise ocean, spray catching the midday sun, photoreal",
  at_session_chunk: 10,
});
await longlive.scheduleSceneCut({
  prompt:
    "A herd of elephants drinking at a watering hole at sunset, acacia trees on the horizon, golden backlight, photoreal",
  at_session_chunk: 20,
});
await longlive.scheduleSceneCut({
  prompt:
    "A bald eagle soaring over snow-capped peaks and pine forest, sweeping aerial tracking shot, photoreal",
  at_session_chunk: 30,
});
await longlive.start();
What you’ll see: clean cuts every ~12s through four natural scenes. Pitfall: keep each prompt dense; terse prompts degrade the output.

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Combining shots and cuts

Establish a scene, evolve it with a soft shot, cut to a new scene, then evolve that one too. 
await longlive.setShot({
  prompt: "A fisherman casts a line from a weathered dock on a still lake at first light",
});
await longlive.scheduleShot({
  prompt: "The camera drifts low to the water as ripples spread from the line",
  at_session_chunk: 14,
});
await longlive.scheduleSceneCut({
  prompt: "A busy fish market at midday, crates of crushed ice and silver fish",
  at_session_chunk: 28,
});
await longlive.scheduleShot({
  prompt: "A vendor hefts a fish onto a brass scale, hands and gills in frame",
  at_session_chunk: 42,
});
await longlive.start();
What you’ll see: the dock scene evolves in one continuous take, the cut hard-breaks to the market, then the market scene evolves in turn. Pitfall: a scheduled shot only fires inside its scene’s budget; the cut at 28 opens a fresh 48-chunk window, so the shot at 42 lands fine.

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Common pitfalls

  • Scheduling a prompt past a scene’s 48-chunk ceiling. A scene auto-completes at 48 chunks. A shot or cut scheduled after that point, with no earlier cut to reset the budget, never fires. Put a scene_cut before the ceiling, or keep the prompt inside the budget.
  • Using a cut when you meant a shot (and vice-versa). A scene_cut for a small framing change throws away continuity you wanted to keep. A set_shot for a true scene change bleeds the old scene into the new one. Match the transition to the intent.
  • Packing a scene change into one prompt. “A forest that becomes a city” confuses the model mid-shot. Make it two prompts: a shot or cut with each scene described on its own.
  • Expecting reference-image input. This release is text-to-video only. There is no image conditioning. Describe the look in words.

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See also