Kling 4.0 launches with 30-second clips, but its own pages disagree on 4K and HDR

Who this is for, and what it helps you decide

If you make short drama, motion comics, trailers or film previs with AI video tools, this note helps you decide whether Kling 4.0 goes into a small test this week, and whether each shot should start from the Omni Reference entry or the Keyframes entry. It is not a basis for committing budget or schedule to 4K, HDR, two-minute extension or API integration.

What Kuaishou and Kling say

Kuaishou's investor-relations release says Kling 4.0 went live on October 15. The pages we read gave no plan-by-plan availability or pricing.

On length, Kuaishou says one generation can run natively up to 30 seconds. Kling's user guide gives a range of 3 to 30 seconds in one-second steps, defaulting to 10.

Kuaishou says up to 10 keyframes can fix character states, scene changes and story beats. In the guide's Keyframes entry, a first frame, a last frame and middle frames at any point on the timeline can all be set.

For Omni Reference, the guide caps a single task at 15 reference assets in total: up to 10 images, 5 videos (30 seconds combined) and 7 elements. All of this is the publisher's own description.

Where the official pages disagree

The pages are not consistent on 4K, 1080p and 10-bit HDR. The press release says 10-bit HDR output is supported while saying 4K, 1080p and 21:9 are still to come. The user guide's spec table lists 720p, 1080p, 4K and 10-bit HDR, yet its overview describes 10-bit HDR as not yet available. Kling's feature page says native 4K and 1080p output are coming soon.

We cannot tell which tier you can select today; check the generation panel in your own account.

Two further items are described as not yet open: extending a clip repeatedly up to two minutes, and API access for enterprises and developers, which has no date.

Two separate entries that cannot be combined

Section 2.1 of the user guide says the workspace has two entry points, Omni Reference and Keyframes. Omni Reference is the default, and both text-to-video and keyframe-to-video generation are available from it. The Keyframes entry stays as a separate option built around the familiar first-frame and first-and-last-frame image-to-video flow; it takes images only and does not accept reference assets.

The guide also says the capabilities of the two entries cannot be combined in a single generation task. That limit applies between the two entries. It does not mean every workflow that uses keyframes is cut off from references, because the Omni Reference entry offers keyframe-to-video on its own.

In the parts we read, the guide does not say whether keyframes inside Omni Reference can be used together with multiple references, how many keyframes that entry allows, or how its keyframe fidelity compares with the Keyframes entry, which the guide describes as aiming for pixel-level consistency with the keyframe images. Compare the two in your own account.

What it may mean for creators (editorial inference, not tested by us)

If a shot has to pin a key image and also stack character or motion references, the two entries involve different trade-offs. It is worth comparing them shot by shot rather than choosing one for a whole project.

Thirty seconds is long enough to try a trailer hook or a single scene. The pages give no figure for how many rerolls a usable shot takes, so log your own rerolls and spend per shot before comparing tools, and do not borrow prices quoted elsewhere.

Claims about character consistency and motion stability are the publisher's own; the pages offer no test method or comparison samples.