The factory
Our own production line for the moving speaker's video. Paid quality, centimes per sentence. These pictures are the real frames of Valentina's presentation, made today.
Why it costs almost nothing
A paid service charges about 2.40 EUR per minute because you pay for its software and its computer bundled together. The factory splits them:
LivePortrait gives a photo quiet life: breathing, a slow blink — her resting state. MuseTalk repaints only the mouth to match a recording. Both are open programs; they cost nothing.
AI video needs a special graphics computer (a GPU). RunPod rents one for about 0.34 USD an hour, billed only while it computes. A sentence takes about ten seconds of machine.
And two economies on top: the factory buys the expensive thing once (the master clip with the living eyes — the factory alone invents flat, dead eyes, so we do not let it invent), and it studies her face once (about two minutes, then remembered in a cache; every later sentence renders in ten seconds).
The numbers, measured
| Thing | When | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Master clip at Magic Hour (the only paid step) | Once per person | ~1.20 EUR |
| Face study (preparation, then cached) | Once per person | ~2 minutes of machine, ~2 cents |
| One sentence of finished video | Every time | ~10 s of machine, under a centime |
| Valentina's 5-part presentation of the People page | Today | ~2 cents total |
| The same minutes at the paid service | — | ~2.40 EUR per minute |
Where the machinery lives
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| The command and the setup (one line per sentence) | claude-code-video-toolkit/docs/musetalk.md |
| The worker code on the rented computers | github.com/gfrankgva/musetalk-worker |
| The standing rule (check the rented-GPU path before paying per minute) | reference-rented-gpu.md |
| The cut-out recipe (green removal, the two files) | key-all-v2.sh |
| The whole speaker recipe this factory serves | site-speaker skill · the People page |