MLA 026 AI Video Generation 2026: Veo, Gemini, Kling, Runway, MiniMax, Sora

Sora is shut down, Google runs two video models, Kling 3 does lip-synced dialogue, and open-weight MiniMax H3 is what you can actually fine-tune. What a usable clip costs, which models do native audio, how reference consistency works, and why the unit of work is the shot. Links Notes and resources at ocdevel.com/mlg/mla-26 More OCDevel shows - this one has siblings, each on its own subject and produced the same way. Companion show: for weekly, hands-on coverage of the AI video pipeline, from a first usable clip to scenes that cut together, listen to AI Video Generation. Try a walking desk - stay healthy & sharp while you learn & code

Second of three episodes on AI media generation, covering Veo, Kling, Runway and MiniMax H3. Four questions: what a usable clip costs, which models generate sound and dialogue natively, how character and shot consistency work now, and where open-weight video fits for a programmer. Ends with the shot-to-scene mental model. What changed since 2025 Native audio is now the baseline at the frontier: Veo 3.1, Kling 3.0, MiniMax H3 and LTX-2.5 sample audio and frames from one model, so lip movement and sound effects land on the right frame. Clips grew from four or five seconds to eight to fifteen, with a few models advertising thirty. Every serious product ships a reference-conditioning feature (Google "ingredients", Kling "elements", Runway references) that holds a character or object across clips. Image-to-video, not text-to-video, is the professional path: lock the first frame with an image model (see AI Image Generation and Editing), then ask the video model to move it. The old "storyteller vs animator" split resolved in favor of the animators. Google: Veo 3.1 and Gemini Omni Google now runs two video models in two places. Veo 3.1 is the developer baseline on the Gemini API and Vertex, in Quality, Fast and Lite tiers, all with native audio; clips are 4, 6 or 8 seconds, and 1080p/4K are upscales of the 8-second clip. It accepts up to three reference images, first-and-last-frame interpolation, and extend in 7-second steps up to 20 times; the Ingredients to Video update added identity consistency, native vertical and 4K upscaling. At Google I/O 2026 Google announced Gemini Omni; Gemini Omni Flash replaced Veo inside the Gemini app and Flow, taking text, image, video or audio as input and supporting conversational video-to-video editing. Per Flow's model matrix it currently tops out at 10 seconds and 720p. All output carries SynthID; the detector portal is still waitlisted. Sora: shut down OpenAI launched Sora 2 on September 30, 2025 with native audio and a free iOS app; it then hit a copyright reckoning over opt-out character use, SAG-AFTRA and Bryan Cranston pushback on likeness, and a court order barring the word "Cameo". In March 2026 OpenAI announced a two-stage shutdown: app and web closed April 26, 2026, API closes September 24, 2026. NBC's reporting attributes it to reallocating compute to coding, reasoning and enterprise; Sora continues only as internal world-model research. It stays in the episode as the case study of a strong model without a business. Kling 3.0 Kuaishou's Kling 3.0 launched globally in March 2026 as a unified image, video and audio model: up to 15 seconds per shot, native 4K, and per the Kling Omni audio guide lip-synced dialogue in five languages with sound effects and ambience generated in the same pass. The control surface is the point: an elements library built from images or short reference video with per-element voice binding, multi-shot generation with continuity, motion transfer from a reference video, motion brush, six-axis camera control, extend and retake. Sold as a credit-based consumer app with commercial rights on paid tiers, plus a first-party API fronted in the West by fal and Replicate. fal's three per-second prices (audio off, audio on, voice control) make the cost of joint audio-video sampling visible. Runway Gen-4.5 and Aleph Runway Gen-4.