The battle in the AI video sector is heating up. While the promise of OpenAI’s SORA has yet to materialize, there are now some new entrants like KlingAI that are really setting the pace. One of the veterans of the game is RunwayML, the New York-based AI video pioneer that has just released the third generation of its already very competent video product suite.
The increasingly crowded AI video market is raising the bar for quality and performance. Where a year ago distorted video clips of actors eating spaghetti were acceptable, today we see truly spectacular and lifelike moving images on our screens. For Runway to remain competitive, it must dramatically modernize its technology, both in terms of resolution and coherence and video fidelity.
Runway Review: Features
It’s important to note that Runway isn’t just a video generation tool. In fact, the platform is packed with a huge variety of tools for editing, adjusting, and enhancing videos and images. As well as text-to-image and green screen background removers. There are also tools for converting images to videos, generative audio, upscaling, and frame interpolation. A total of 32 media tools for virtually every media editing purpose imaginable.
There are five plans, ranging from a free plan with 125 credits for 25 watermarked images (which cannot be renewed) to an Unlimited plan at $95 per month for 2250 Gen 3 image credits and the ability to train a model in a specific style. These aren’t the most generous plans on the market, especially compared to the increasing number of international competitors, but for most people the standard plan at $15 per month for 625 Gen 3 image credits is a good place to start.
- Five plans, including a free one-time use plan
- Sophisticated video editing works seamlessly alongside AI integration
- Project and team functions for professionals in companies and creative studios
Runway review: First impressions
The dashboard on the home screen provides instant access to the tools most users need on a daily basis. Text to Video, Video to Video, Lip Sync Video and Background Removal are likely to be very popular. The menu options are enhanced by allowing you to mark any option as a favorite, at which point it will be available at the top of the screen to make navigation even easier.
The product’s business focus is confirmed by the prominent position of the Assets and Workspace sections in the sidebar. Here you can organize and share all your creations in folders and under custom tags, making it easier to build a portfolio of business assets that can be quickly and easily reused. This is one of the features that is often overlooked by newer platforms, but it is very important when you have teams working on company-wide material day in and day out.
Additionally, using Projects that combine the best aspects of video editing with some AI features gives team users a lot of control over their workflow, which in turn is important for business users. The basic editing features revolve around a traditional video timeline motif, so it’s definitely not just an AI prompt and you’re done. Some serious editing can be done to all clip creations, including green screen, motion tracking, and filters. This is where things start to get a little complicated.
This comprehensive editing suite is what sets Runway apart from the competition, but this strength is also a small weakness. To get the most out of the platform, users will definitely need to spend time reading the detailed tutorials on Runway Academythe built-in help system. The combination of sophisticated AI and advanced editing means you can create virtually anything you want or dream of. But learning how to do it from scratch is no easy task.
Runway Review: In Action
Many users, especially at the lower tiers, will likely view Runway as just another AI video generator, and to be honest, they’ll get a lot of use out of using it that way. At this level, you’ll really just be using the prompt box and only doing some basic editing to the results.
For example, I created a quick and easy lip-sync video in about five minutes and the results were very impressive. However, I’m not sure using an avatar tool like HeyGen along with an ElevenLabs voice would have been less impressive – and in a shorter and less cumbersome process.
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To some extent, I can see that this is intentional. A quick look at the platform’s user gallery makes clear the company’s claim to be an artistic pioneer and not just a video editing service. This nod to Hollywood can be seen in almost every video we see on the Runway Studios Gallery page. Sure, you can make cheesy corporate marketing videos, the demos seem to say, but what we really want you to do is use us to create award-winning art. That’s a great differentiator, just as Midjourney deliberately appeals to the artistic image creator rather than the marketing hacks of the world.
So, with that in mind, can we say that Runway really offers what the general market needs? The answer is a resounding yes. While none of the tools on offer are probably the best in class, together they offer a perfect blend of AI features that anyone can turn to when needed. It didn’t take me long to record a lip-sync video clip, slide it into the green screen editor, and replace the background entirely. That would have been a lot of work a few years ago, but today it takes just minutes.
I tried most of the tools on the platform and they all worked as expected. Everything looked really cool with slow motion, I used scene detection to split a video into scenes, I ran a background remix with mixed effects and turned a black image back to color. Everything worked, although some of the image generation was downright weird, especially faces. I even created a fruity 3D texture to use as part of my imaginary game assets. But the whole time I felt like I was missing the point.
The point is that Runway is clearly much more than the sum of its individual tools. Unlike most other AI tools on the market, it is designed for true visual artists, not just enterprise users and consumers who want to create a video quickly and on time. Just as it takes time to learn how to get the most out of the platform, it also takes an “artist’s eye” to combine the elements into something beautiful and valuable.
The company’s founders met at a New York art school, and the platform has been used on Hollywood blockbusters, music videos for the likes of Kanye West, and editing TV shows like The Late Show. This isn’t your grandmother’s AI text-to-video product. Let’s put aside the recent controversy over training the models on YouTube footage and consider the surreal fact that the company actually hosts annual AI film festivals in New York and Los Angeles.
Runway Review: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
It’s important to remember that while RunwayML isn’t Adobe Inc., with a forty-year software heritage, the company’s Gen X tools have arguably done more to disrupt the world of video editing than any other company in recent history—and that’s in just eighteen months since the first product launched. While Avid and Adobe hold top spots in video editing among professional filmmakers, the sheer depth and versatility of Gen 3 has thrown down the gauntlet when it comes to using AI intelligence to produce high-quality editing results.
However, the young platform still has a long way to go to mature into a real rival for the crown. For one thing, it’s still quite a laborious process to get a top-notch result at a professional level. The company’s experience as co-developer of the ‘Stable Diffusion’ image generation technology is both a strength and a weakness. It’s clear that the focus on delivering innovative video has overshadowed the development work on image generation, and that shows in the weak coherence and fidelity of many Runway Gen 3 results. But Gen 3 is still in alpha, so perhaps we should forgive.
But it’s the UI that really cries out for help at this stage, and before it’s too late. For some reason, the user experience is more like wading through a teenager’s messy bedroom. Stuff is scattered everywhere, with no discernible order or pattern. For example, why are there two separate menu options for Generative Audio and Lip Sync Video when they’re identical features?
And why aren’t there two functional interfaces that are consistent in look and feel? Every component of the platform is confusingly different, even when functionality and UI could easily be more consistent. And whose brilliant idea was it to hide the main video editing feature under a “More” button in the sidebar? Ouch!
Runway Review: Conclusion
To be fair, UX and UI are often the very last things addressed in the mad race to bring a product to market. Working out features, fixing bugs and responding to market demands often rightly take up all the attention, leaving little time for the poor customer’s usability needs. Just ask eBay. But we’re rapidly approaching the end of the honeymoon phase in AI applications, and if the company doesn’t address some of the key issues, someone else will very likely come along and take over the market.
My experience with the platform, while limited by my complete lack of artistic ability, has shown me that this product has a bright future for all the right reasons. It’s not sophisticated, but it’s clearly extremely powerful and has all the elements needed to build a product that rivals anything else on the market in terms of multimedia file creation and editing. The seamless AI integration is definitely a bonus.
Ultimately, I felt like I was outdone by the toolkit. My cursory efforts to create an AI video clip barely scratched the surface of what Runway is capable of. Yes, it can handle AI-based image and video editing tasks, much like a Ferrari can help you pick up groceries at Walmart. But for professional video creatives who need to step out of line and really showcase their talent at the highest level, I see few competitors for the Runway Gen X tools on offer here.
