Talking Avatar API

About Talking Avatar

Turn one portrait and a voice recording into a video of that person speaking the words. Lips, head and expression follow the audio, and the clip runs exactly as long as the recording.

Call it with the model name popnow/talking-avatar-v1/talking-avatar on POST /jobs/createTask, from 2.7 credits per second ($0.027). New accounts get 30 free credits to try it in the Playground first.

Introduction

Talking Avatar turns a single portrait into a speaking clip. You send the face in image_url and a voice recording in audio_url; the tool animates the mouth, jaw and small head movements so the person appears to say exactly what is in the recording. The clip is as long as the audio, three to sixty seconds, and comes back with your recording already on it, ready to post or to drop into an edit.

Key features

The audio sets the timing

Every mouth shape is driven by the sound itself, so pauses, quick phrases and emphasis land where the speaker put them. There is no script field and no timing to tune: record the line the way it should be delivered and the face follows it, second for second.

The portrait stays the scene

Clothing, hair, background and framing come straight from the image. Nothing around the face is regenerated, which keeps a presenter, a character or a spokesperson recognisably the same from one clip to the next. The output is compact, about 0.2 megapixels at 25 frames per second (a 16:9 photo came back at 640×352, a 3:4 portrait at 400×544), so plan for feeds and chat windows rather than full-screen playback.

Request parameters

Pricing

Prices are in credits, the same credits you use on the website (1 credit = $0.01). The hold is taken when the task is accepted and settled to the actual charge when it finishes; failed tasks are refunded.

For an exact number before you run, send the same body to POST /jobs/quote.

Use cases

Presenter clips from a still

Course intros, product walkthroughs and weekly updates can reuse one approved portrait with a fresh recording each time. Switching languages is just a matter of sending a different audio file with the same image, so one presenter can cover several markets.

Characters that answer out loud

Companion and role-play apps can let a character deliver a reply on camera: keep one character portrait, turn the reply into speech, and send the pair. A short reply takes a minute or two to render, so start the job while the text reply is already on screen.

Prompt guide & pro tips

Choose the portrait for the mouth

The mouth is the part that moves, so give it pixels: head-and-shoulders framing, face turned roughly toward the camera, even light and nothing covering the lips. Sunglasses, strong profile angles and small faces in a wide shot are the usual reasons a result looks off.

Clean audio beats loud audio

Export speech without background music, echoey rooms or overlapping voices. Keep each file between three and sixty seconds and split longer scripts at natural pauses.

Prompt for mood, mask for who

The prompt field nudges expression, such as calm, cheerful or serious, but cannot change who speaks or where. When the portrait shows more than one person, pass mask_url with the speaker painted white on black, at the same size as the image. Fix seed to compare two recordings on the same portrait.

API quick start

Call the Talking Avatar API in three steps

1. Create an API key. Sign in to PopNow and create a key in the API console. Keys start with sk-popnow- and use the same credits as the website.
2. Send the request. POST /jobs/createTask with model popnow/talking-avatar-v1/talking-avatar and an input object that follows the parameter table. The response returns a task ID straight away.
3. Get the result. Poll GET /jobs/recordInfo with the task ID, or pass a callBackUrl and we post the result to it. Download the output links when the task succeeds.

# 1. Create the task. Keep the Idempotency-Key if you retry after a network error.
export IDEMPOTENCY_KEY="$(uuidgen)"
curl -X POST https://api.popnow.ai/api/v1/jobs/createTask \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $POPNOW_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: $IDEMPOTENCY_KEY" \
  -d '{
  "model": "popnow/talking-avatar-v1/talking-avatar",
  "input": {
    "image_url": "https://media.popnow.ai/influencer/examples/marco.webp",
    "audio_url": "https://media.popnow.ai/shortfilm/voices/Aoede-46e4c427.mp3"
  }
}'

# 2. Copy data.taskId from the response, then poll until state is succeeded, failed, canceled or expired.
TASK_ID="TASK_ID_FROM_RESPONSE"
curl "https://api.popnow.ai/api/v1/jobs/recordInfo?taskId=$TASK_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $POPNOW_API_KEY"

Replace the prompt and any links with your own. The API tab has the response, polling and callback reference.

Talking Avatar API questions

Other video APIs

• MiniMax H3 APIExpressive clips with audio, up to 2KFrom 28 credits for a 5-second clip
• Kling Avatar 2.0 APIA portrait that speaks or sings your audio, up to 5 minutesFrom 7.68 credits per second

More about Talking Avatar

Try it

Talking Avatar AI Talking Avatar onlineCreate videos with Talking Avatar in PopNow

Docs

Talking Avatar model ID and input schema in the API docsPopNow API quickstart: your first request in five minutesImage to video guide for the PopNow APIWebhooks: get Talking Avatar results without polling