中文版：H3 提示词公式：一套能复用的写法，而不是碰运气的句子

The H3 Prompt Formula: A Reusable Structure, Not a Lucky Sentence

The most common mistake in video prompting is treating a prompt as a single flash of inspiration: you have a subject and a scene, you submit, and when the result disappoints you cannot say exactly what went wrong. MiniMax’s official guides take the opposite approach: split “what to shoot, how to shoot it, and what to hear” into fixed fields, then fill in the details required by each mode. The formula below comes from the official prompt-writing guides and the Hailuo official tutorial. Use it as a pre-writing checklist — not as a promise that any single generation will turn out well.

1. The Chinese base formulas: learn two sentences before going precise

The Hailuo official tutorial gives two formulas. The difference is only whether you have a clear requirement for the camera.

Basic formula (no specific camera requirement):

Main subject + scene / space + movement / change

For example: a paper boat spinning in a rain puddle; a street vendor flipping food under night-market lights.

Precise formula (when you have a clear camera or visual requirement):

Main subject + scene / space + movement / change + camera movement + aesthetic atmosphere

For example: a paper boat spinning in a rain puddle, the camera slowly pushing in on the boat, in a cool, realistic tone; a vendor flipping food under night-market lights, the camera first holding on the hands, then slowly pulling back to reveal the stall, in warm, lively colors.

The official tutorial states two principles worth pinning above your desk: more precise expression leads to more accurate presentation; richer expression leads to better generation. “Richer” does not mean piling on adjectives. It means giving each part — subject, space, action, camera, lighting, and sound — one verifiable piece of information.

2. H3’s three-field structure: keep the body, the soundscape, and the music apart

The four base modes — T2VA (text-to-video), I2VA (image-to-video), FL2VA (first-and-last-frame), and L2VA (last-frame) — share three core fields. Understanding this division matters more than memorizing a template:

  1. integrated_multimodal_description (the body): a timeline-ordered description of visuals, actions, camera moves, speakers, dialogue, singing, and sound synced to the picture. This is the main body, and also where prompts most easily sprawl.
  2. overall_soundscape: 1–4 English sentences summarizing the whole film’s ambience, physical action sounds, and non-verbal human sounds — wind, footsteps, clothing rustle, breathing. Do not repeat dialogue, singing, or in-story music here; those already live in the body.
  3. non_diegetic_music: 1–3 English sentences describing score that only the audience hears. Describe instruments, tempo, rhythm, and dynamics only. Do not use abstract mood words, and do not explain what feeling the music is supposed to create. Write N/A when there is no background music; write N/A in the soundscape field only when total silence is explicitly requested.

A frequent failure is stuffing every sound into the body, or writing mood words into the music field. When the fields are separated, the model can tell “sound that exists inside the scene” from “music added on top.”

H3 three-field diagram
Diagram: three fields, kept apart — body, soundscape, score.

3. Shots and cuts: cut only for new information

  • [Shot 1] takes no timestamp. Open it by declaring the overall style and initial composition first, for example Cinematic, live-action, 2D-animated, or watercolor. Image-based modes derive the style from the reference image; text-only modes take it from your description.
  • Later shots use an increasing shot number and a strictly increasing cut time, for example [Shot 2] At 00:03.500, the camera cuts to....
  • The cut rule is clean: a cut must introduce new information about the subject, space, state, viewpoint, or time. If only the framing distance or a slight angle changes, use a camera move instead of a cut.
  • First-and-last-frame (FL2VA) normally uses a single continuous shot interpolating from the first frame to the last; use multiple shots only when explicitly required, and the final shot must land exactly on the last frame at the end of the video.

In short: do not cut frequently just to look rich. Every cut should give the viewer one new piece of information.

4. Camera: Chinese [instructions] or English “type + amplitude + speed”

Chinese [instruction] syntax (Hailuo-02 / 2.3 / Director series)

The official documentation supports 15 camera instructions: [左移] [右移] [左摇] [右摇] [推进] [拉远] [上升] [下降] [上摇] [下摇] [变焦推近] [变焦拉远] [晃动] [跟随] [固定].

Rules for use:

  • Multiple instructions inside one bracket take effect at the same time, for example [左摇,上升]; combining more than three is not recommended.
  • Instructions appearing one after another in the prompt execute in sequence, for example [推进] first, then [拉远].
  • Natural-language camera descriptions are also supported, but the standard instructions usually give a more accurate response.
  • The Chinese tutorial recommends keeping a single camera movement within 5–6 seconds, and avoiding overly complex moves that risk generation failure.

English natural-language camera (H3 guide)

A complete camera expression has three dimensions: movement type + amplitude + speed. Write amplitude and speed only when they matter; medium amplitude and normal speed are usually omitted.

The key distinction: Zoom In moves only the focal length while the camera body stays still; Push In moves the whole camera forward through space. They look different, and the model distinguishes them, so choose by intent rather than treating them as synonyms. Other common types include Pan Left / Right (rotate horizontally, body still), Truck Left / Right (move horizontally), Tilt Up / Down (rotate vertically), Pedestal Up / Down (raise or lower the whole camera), Arc Shot (orbit around the subject), Tracking Shot (follow a moving subject), Static Shot (no movement), Shake Slightly / Strongly, POV, and Roll (rotate around the lens axis).

Write camera as natural action inside the shot, not as a tag list at the end. A useful move states where the camera starts, what path it takes, where it lands, how large the movement is, and how fast it goes.

A rewrite example (generic wording, not anyone else’s work)

  • Before: the camera rotates and descends.

  • After: the camera first descends slowly, then circles to the right while continuing to descend.

  • Before: the camera shoots a lighthouse from below.

  • After: the camera starts on a close-up of the rocks at the lighthouse base, rises slowly past the tower, and settles on a close view of the lamp room at the top.

Neither rewrite adds a new plot point. Both simply make the path, the starting point, and the landing point explicit. That is the highest-value edit you can make to the camera part.

Push In vs Zoom In diagram
Diagram: Push In moves the camera forward; Zoom In stays still and changes focal length.

5. Write per mode: image, first-last, and last-frame each need a different first sentence

  • Text-to-video (T2VA): no reference image; build the full timeline directly from text. You may add scene, character, action, and sound detail as long as it stays consistent with the user’s intent.
  • Image-to-video (I2VA): the reference image is the actual first frame at 0.00 seconds. Recommended structure: anchor the first frame first, then develop the action. Identity, clothing, colors, key objects, and spatial relationships must match the first frame. The flow is “anchor → action starts → continuous development → result or reaction.”
  • First-and-last-frame (FL2VA): do not describe the two still images again. Write the path connecting them: how the subject moves, how the pose changes, how objects are handled, how the composition and lighting evolve. The flow is “first-frame state → observable middle change → differences narrow → last-frame state.”
  • Last-frame (L2VA): the reference image is the final frame. First derive a plausible prior state from the intent and the last frame, then describe how people, objects, camera, and scene gradually converge on that last frame.

Image-based modes also carry an image-alignment line as the first line (followed by a blank line before the core fields; text-to-video has none), stating which image aligns with which second of the video. Follow the official guide’s phrasing for alignment rather than inventing your own.

6. Full-reference mode: six parts, and assign each reference a job first

Full-reference mode (R2V) output contains six parts, in order:

  1. subject_definitions: define the referenced content and its tags;
  2. summary: a short English summary of the task type, the target video, and the main reference relationships, starting with a bracketed task-type prefix;
  3. retention_analysis: how each reference is kept, transferred, or reused;
  4. detailed_description: shot-by-shot description of visuals, actions, sounds, and dialogue, in playback order — the body;
  5. overall_soundscape: summary of ambient and physical sounds;
  6. non_diegetic_music: description of background music only.

Once a reference tag is assigned, its meaning must stay consistent across all six parts: <Subject N> is a reusable visible unit (person, animal, object, scene, outfit, style, action, expression, pose); <Picture N> is a target frame, keyframe, or composition anchor; <Video N> provides an edit source, a continuation start, or overall timing; <Audio N> is audio to copy or reference (timbre, rhythm, style, content).

Retention uses fixed English values. For visible content: fully_preserved, partially_preserved, attribute_transfer, weak_reference. For audio: fully_copy, partially_copy, reference, weak_reference. The most common multi-reference failure is not the model “disobeying” — it is a prompt that never says what each image or audio clip is responsible for, so identities, actions, and styles contaminate each other. Before writing, assign one job per asset in a sentence: this image controls the person, that image controls the scene, this audio only contributes rhythm.

7. Dialogue, on-screen text, and character consistency

  • Give speakers stable IDs, for example (S1) and (S2); two people speaking together use (S1,S2). Keep the same ID for the same speaker across shots. Characters who never make a sound get no ID.
  • When a speaker first appears, give enough information to establish identity: type, age, gender, whether on screen, pitch, timbre, pace, and accent.
  • Dialogue format: the speaker identifier, ID, and action go outside <d>; inside <d> put only the language tag and the exact words, verbatim, with original wording and punctuation — never translated or rewritten, for example <d>[English] ...</d>. Voiceover uses the fixed phrasing says in an off-screen voiceover, and every voiceover must state that the on-screen character’s lips stay closed.
  • Real text visible on screen (banners, signs, labels, subtitles, neon lights) goes in English double quotes, verbatim and untranslated.
  • The official consistency formula is: hairstyle + age/gender + clothing colors + environment (especially lighting), repeated in every relevant prompt. Do not write “brown curly hair, brownish top” in the first shot and drop it later; consistency comes precisely from repetition.

8. Common failure points

  1. Stacking multiple scenes in one prompt: one prompt, one scene — not a city, a forest, and space in one go.
  2. Vague actions: do not write “does something interesting”; write a concrete action such as “blinks,” “looks up,” or “pushes the cup toward the table edge.”
  3. Stacking camera tags: do not list push, pull, pan, tilt, truck, and zoom as unrelated synonyms; a complex move needs a start, a path, amplitude, speed, and a landing point, and must be believable within the available seconds.
  4. Overlong, overcomplex shots: keep a single camera movement within about 5–6 seconds.
  5. Mood words in the music field: background music takes instruments, tempo, rhythm, and dynamics only.
  6. Repeating sounds: the soundscape field must not repeat dialogue, singing, or in-story music already in the body.
  7. Unclear reference roles: every reference asset needs an explicit role.
  8. Freely translating on-screen text: keep visible text in English double quotes, verbatim.
  9. Describing first-and-last frames as two stills: write the path between them instead.

9. Pre-writing checklist

  • Can you state in one sentence: who is the subject, where are they, what are they doing?
  • Does the camera have a start, a path, and a landing point? Are amplitude and speed needed?
  • Does each cut bring new information? If not, change it back to a camera move.
  • Are the three sound fields clearly divided, with no repetition and no mood words in the music?
  • Does the first sentence fit the mode — text, image, first-last, or last-frame?
  • Does every reference asset have a clear role and a consistent tag?
  • Are hairstyle, age/gender, clothing colors, and lighting repeated in every relevant prompt?
  • Is dialogue verbatim with original punctuation? Is on-screen text verbatim in double quotes?
  • Is the whole prompt one scene with one clear action?

A practical next step: take one simple scene (for example the paper boat, the puddle, and the post-rain light) and write it once with the basic formula and once with the precise formula. Revise against this checklist three times before adding reference images or multiple shots. The formula does not guarantee a good video, but it makes every revision traceable: you changed the camera, the sound, or the reference assignment — and you know which one.