50-second avatar video with inline captions: $12.25 at Plus

Turning on captions in a Sume avatar video request does not add a billed caption job. A 50-second clip at Plus is $12.25 (50 x $0.245) whether or not the captions are on, according to the docs, which say inline captions do not create a separate billed video-caption job.

Inline versus standalone

Inline captions are burned into the clean final MP4 after generation, using the spoken script or video_inputs text. Standalone Video captions is for a public video URL you already have and is a separate model.

Settings

The captions object takes enabled, style (default slam), optional font, a language hint and script_text. Latin styles are slam, punch and tiktok-green. For Korean speech use a Hangul style such as korean-ad.

Inline captions are rejected when the estimated duration is over 60 seconds. If the caption stage fails, the job can still succeed with a clean primary video_url and captions.status=failed, so a caption problem does not cost you the render.

• Rates: Standard $0.184, Plus $0.245, Max $0.55 per second without a product image; $0.194, $0.258, $0.58 with one (Sume pricing page, as of 2026-10-08).
• 50 seconds at Standard: $9.20. At Max: $27.50.

Previews and captions

If you start with an avatar video preview, store the captions on preview create and they apply at generate-video. Sume never burns captions into preview stills.

Practical notes

Idempotency. The docs examples send an Idempotency-Key header on every create call. Use one key per intended job and reuse it only when you retry the same request. A network timeout followed by a fresh submit with a new key is the one path that can create, and bill, a second job. Keep keys human-readable, such as the campaign and scene, so a support lookup is easy.

Quality tiers. quality accepts standard, plus and max. Plus is the default when you omit it. Standard is the fastest Sume execution path, and Max is the highest quality tier with slower turnaround. Because the three differ in both price and speed, decide the tier per stage of your workflow: a quick pass to confirm wording, then a final render once the script is settled.

Output format. Avatar video output is 720p at this time, and the aspect ratio defaults to 9:16 with 1:1, 3:4, 4:3 and 16:9 also accepted. Choose the ratio in the request rather than cropping afterward, since a crop throws away part of a frame you paid for by the second.

Job lifecycle. Every Sume avatar request is job-backed. You submit, store the job id, and poll GET /v1/jobs/{id}/status until it completes, then read GET /v1/jobs/{id}/result. The shared lifecycle also lets you wait with sync or subscribe mode for a limited time instead of polling, and the result carries Sume-hosted artifacts rather than provider URLs, so you never handle a provider queue id. Plan your client around the job, not around a single blocking response.