🎬

Video Generation - Helios Base

🛠

Real-Time Long Video Generation (Highest Quality Variant)

Most AI video tools either top out at a few seconds or need an expensive multi-GPU cluster to go longer — and quality drifts the moment a clip runs long. Helios Base is the flagship, highest-quality member of the Helios family: it generates long-form video (up to ~60 seconds) from a text description, a starting image, or an existing clip, and it does it in real time on a single GPU at 19.5 FPS. When output quality is the priority, this is the variant to reach for. Built by PKU-YuanGroup.

What it does

Helios Base is the flagship, highest-quality variant of the Helios video generation model family, developed by PKU-YuanGroup. It generates long-form, visually rich video content from a text description, a reference image, or an existing video clip. While the distilled version of Helios prioritizes speed, Helios Base is the go-to choice when output quality is the top priority, producing the most detailed, coherent, and visually polished results in the family. It still runs on a single GPU and generates video in real time at 19.5 FPS, making it both high-quality and cost-effective compared to larger competing models.

Problem it solves

  • Best-in-class output – Among the three Helios variants, Base delivers the highest visual fidelity, making it the right choice for premium creative and production use cases
  • Cost-effective infrastructure – Runs on a single GPU rather than expensive multi-GPU server clusters, significantly reducing compute costs
  • Flexible creative input – Works from a text description alone, a starting image, or an existing video clip, fitting a wide range of creative and production workflows
  • Temporal coherence – Videos remain visually consistent and coherent throughout their full length, without the common "drift" or quality degradation seen in longer AI-generated clips
  • Production-ready deployment – Designed to integrate into existing production pipelines and tools from day one

Input/Output

  • Input:
    • Text to Video: Describe the scene you want in plain language and Helios generates the video
      • image
    • Image to Video: Provide a starting image and a description of the motion or scene
    • Video to Video: Provide an existing video clip and a description to transform or extend it
  • Output: A fully generated MP4 video file
    • Up to ~60 seconds in length
    • High visual quality with smooth, coherent motion throughout
      • image
  • Parameters:
    • Resolution (W × H, ratio) (dropdown, default 640 × 384 (5:3)) — pick from 11 aspect-ratio presets:
      • Landscape
      Square
      Portrait
      768 × 320 (12:5)
      512 × 512 (1:1)
      448 × 576 (7:9)
      768 × 384 (2:1)
      512 × 768 (2:3)
      640 × 384 (5:3) (default)
      384 × 640 (3:5)
      768 × 512 (3:2)
      384 × 768 (1:2)
      576 × 448 (9:7)
      320 × 768 (5:12)
    • Frame count (chunk multiples, default 99 frames (~4s @ 24fps)) — pick from a fixed list that maps to standard clip lengths at 24 fps:
      • Frames
      Duration @ 24 fps
      99 (default)
      ~4 s
      198
      ~8 s
      297
      ~12.5 s
      396
      ~16.5 s
      495
      ~21 s
      594
      ~25 s
      693
      ~29 s
      792
      ~33 s
      891
      ~37 s
      990
      ~41 s
      1,089
      ~45 s
      1,188
      ~49.5 s
      1,287
      ~54 s
      1,386
      ~58 s
      1,452
      ~60.5 s
      Frame counts must be chunk multiples — the model generates in 33-frame autoregressive chunks (99 = 3 chunks, 198 = 6 chunks, and so on), which is why the dropdown offers only these specific values.
    • Output FPS (dropdown, default 24) — choose 16 or 24 fps
      • 24 — standard cinematic frame rate
      • 16 — lighter alternative for shorter or more animation-style output
    • Advanced Options:
      • Diffusion steps (range 20 – 60, default 50) — how many denoising passes the model runs per chunk. More steps = higher quality, slower generation; fewer steps = faster, may lose some detail. This slider is the main quality/speed trade-off for the Base variant (the Distilled variant has this collapsed into a fixed schedule)
      • Random seed (-1 = random, default 1) — set a fixed integer to reproduce the same video across runs

Accuracy & Speed

  • Speed & Scale
Real-time generation speed
19.5 frames per second on a single H100 GPU
Maximum video length
~ 60 seconds
Infrastructure needed
Single GPU (no multi-GPU cluster required)
Output quality
Highest in the Helios model family

Helios Model Variants

Version
Best For
Helios Base
Highest output quality - ideal for premium and production use cases
Helios Mid
Intermediate quality/speed balance
Helios Distilled
Fastest generation - best for high-volume or real-time use cases
Note: Image-to-Video and Video-to-Video modes may produce slightly less consistent results than Text-to-Video, as the model was primarily trained on text-based generation.
‣
Technical Details

Model Source

Compliance & Provenance

Provider
Open-source (PKU-YuanGroup)
Provider type
Specialized
License
apache-2.0
EU AI Act risk class
Limited Risk
Art. 50 transparency
Required — outputs are marked. See AI Policy §2.
Region availability
Available globally
Training data summary
Pending — provider has not yet published per Art. 53(d)

For more on how we classify models and mark outputs, see our AI Policy.

Run it now