Midjourney Video: A Speedy New Contender
I’ve been on the Midjourney train since the early days. Back when it was all happening on Discord and the image generations were… let’s just say, terrible. We were coaxing distorted faces and six-fingered hands out of the machine. But it was new, and it was exciting.
Fast forward to today, and the entire AI landscape has shifted. We’ve gone from slightly strange images to a reality where AI video generation is not just possible, but genuinely useful. After a long wait, Midjourney has finally entered the chat, offering a unique advantage in a crowded field.
A Different Kind of Player
I still use a whole suite of other AI video tools. Platforms like Runway, Luma, and Veo are part of my regular workflow, and some models, like Minimax’s Hailuo, produce absolutely amazing, high-quality output. I don’t rate Midjourney as being better than these across the board.
The usual downside with the high-quality models, though, is the wait time. They can take a long while to process a single clip.
This is where Midjourney’s new video feature carves out its space. It’s fast. Incredibly fast. Instead of waiting an age for one output, it gives you four different variations to choose from in one go. For a Creative Director who needs to test ideas quickly, this speed is the real game-changer. I found the outputs very usable with very little to no re-runs.
Turning Stills into Stories
The core feature is turning an image into a short video. You can use one of your old Midjourney generations or, impressively, upload your own image as a starting point. From there, you get simple but powerful controls: ‘low motion’ for a subtle, cinematic feel, or ‘high motion’ for something more dynamic. You can even adjust the prompt to guide the animation.
I took a still image I had of the Dubai skyline, fed it into the model, and it generated a stunning drone-style video. The sense of motion and parallax was spot on.
This is a game-changer for bringing concepts to life quickly.
The Good, The Bad, and The Workaround
The biggest downside right now is the resolution. The videos are generated at a fairly low resolution, which isn’t ideal for big screens. However, it’s nothing a tool like Topaz Video AI can’t fix. A quick upscale, and the quality is surprisingly crisp.
The real magic is in the consistency. I went back through my library of old Midjourney images and generated a bunch of clips. The model is brilliant at retaining the artistic style of the original image while adding believable motion.
Here are a few of the ones I generated from my archives:
A New Tool in the Kit
Midjourney Video isn’t the highest quality generator on the market, but it might just be the most practical for my day-to-day. In advertising, speed is everything. The ability to rapidly visualise an idea and get multiple takes in minutes is an advantage that’s hard to overstate. It’s a fantastic first step, and a welcome new tool in the creative toolkit.
The days of waiting around for a single, slow AI video clip are numbered. For rapid iteration, Midjourney has arrived, and it was worth the wait.
Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you might also like my earlier piece on I’m Addicted to Midjourney AI, where I explored my journey with Midjourney’s image generation capabilities from the early days.