AI color grading for video: AI edit or a fixed grade?

AI color grading for video can mean two different things. An AI video edit re-renders your clip toward a look you describe in words, and may change details along with the color. A filter grade applies fixed tone, balance and temperature settings to every frame, never changes what is in the picture, and applies the same settings to every clip you run it on. Pick the AI edit to explore a look, and the filter grade when many clips must match.

Both are available on Sume: the AI edit is gemini-omni-flash-1.1 on the Video Router, and the fixed grade is a Video filter job. The facts below come from the Video Router, Video filter and Media inputs docs, the FFmpeg filters documentation, and Sume's pricing code, read on 2026-09-29.

What is the difference between an AI grade and a filter grade?

How do I grade a video with an AI prompt?

Send POST /v1/video-router/generate with model: "gemini-omni-flash-1.1", the clip's public HTTPS URL in video_url, and the look in prompt, ending with what must stay, as in the docs' edit example: “Keep everything else the same.” Compare the result with the source, because the docs don't promise what else an edit changes.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-router/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: ai-grade-001" \
  -d '{
    "model": "gemini-omni-flash-1.1",
    "prompt": "Color grade this clip with a warm, soft film look: gentle contrast, warm highlights, slightly muted greens. Keep everything else the same.",
    "video_url": "https://example.com/beach.mp4",
    "resolution": "720p",
    "mode": "async"
  }'

How do I apply the same grade to many clips?

Write the look once as a filtergraph and send that exact string with each clip to POST /v1/video-filter, so every clip gets the same filters with the same values. A look can combine a warmth change with colortemperature, a shadow or highlight tint with colorbalance, and contrast and saturation with eq; How to color correct a video explains each filter's options and ranges.

Run POST /v1/video-filter/check on the program first. It validates the program for free, without encoding, but a program that passes can still fail on the worker, so render one clip before the batch.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-filter \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: grade-clip-07" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/clip-07.mp4",
    "filtergraph": "colortemperature=temperature=5200,eq=contrast=0.95:saturation=0.9,colorbalance=rh=0.05:bs=0.05"
  }'

Can I use a LUT or grade my own footage?

Not a LUT: lut3d and anything that reads a file are not on the filter's allowlist, which How to color correct a video covers. As for your own footage, the filter reads only clips already in your Sume workspace on media.sume.com, such as earlier Sume outputs. The AI edit is the one of the two that takes a clip at a public HTTPS URL, but it re-renders that clip rather than grading the original frames.

How much does AI color grading cost?

The AI edit is billed per output second by resolution at the provider's list price × 1.25, $0.125 a second at the default 720p. A filter job reserves up to $0.02 per encode and captures its own compute, never above that, whatever the clip's length up to 300 seconds. Both add a 5.5% agent fee by default.