# ANOMALY Knowledge · Kling 3.0 reference

**The cheaper animator.** Roughly half the cost of Seedance, and strong on simple static-camera shots. Use it when you are generating a lot of straightforward beats and want the volume, or when Seedance is queued.

**Kling and Seedance take genuinely different prompt styles.** Always tell your Claude which one you are using before it writes motion prompts — a Seedance prompt pasted into Kling will not give you the same result.

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## The one hard limit

**2500 characters, maximum.** This is a hard ceiling, not a guideline. Anything longer fails. Kling prompts should be shorter and more declarative than Seedance prompts anyway.

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## Settings

| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Start image | The approved still — never text-to-video |
| Aspect ratio | 9:16 |
| Duration | 4–5 seconds |
| Prompt length | Under 2500 characters, hard limit |
| Runs per prompt | 2–3, pick the best |

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## The prompt shape

Kling responds better to short declarative statements than to a long structured brief. Front-load the motion:

```
[The one action, stated plainly and first].
Handheld phone video, small organic sway, as if a real person is holding it.
Background static. Natural light. iPhone UGC look.
Slow realistic hand movement. No morphing, no warping, no text.
```

Compare with the Seedance shape, which carries an explicit opening-frame description and a timeline — Kling generally does better without that scaffolding.

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## What carries over from Seedance

Everything about *what makes an organic clip work* is the same regardless of engine:

- **Handheld sway on every clip.** A locked-off shot reads as an animated photo, which is the AI tell. 110 of 160 corpus winners are handheld.
- **One action per clip.** Not a sequence.
- **Action after speaking, never during.**
- **Hands slow, or partly out of frame.**
- **Never ask for rendered text.** Words are burned in at edit time.
- **4–7 beats of roughly 2 seconds**, 8–16s total, target 12.

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## Choosing between the two

| Use Kling when | Use Seedance when |
|---|---|
| The shot is simple and the camera is basically still | The motion is the point of the shot |
| You are generating many beats and cost matters | It is the hook beat, which carries the video |
| Seedance is queued | You need the most reliable result |

A practical pattern: **Seedance for the hook beat, Kling for the middle beats.** The hook is the one shot that decides whether anything else gets seen, so it is worth the better engine; the interior beats are usually simple enough that the cheaper model is indistinguishable.

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## Failure modes

| Symptom | Fix |
|---|---|
| Prompt rejected | Over 2500 characters. Cut it down |
| Result ignores the brief | Too much scaffolding — Kling wants the action stated first and plainly |
| Motion too aggressive | Add "subtle", "slow", "minimal movement" |
| Looks like an animated photo | The handheld sway line is missing |
| Face or hands break | The action was too complex for one clip. Split it |