Avatar video is 720p only: fit it into a 1080x1920 series

Avatar Video 1.0 renders only at 720p, so to deliver a 1080x1920 series put the avatar clip into a Timeline 1.0 slot. Timeline outputs 1080x1920 by default and a slot's fit decides how a 720p source fills the frame. The render fee is $0.10 per output minute, rounded up.

The numbers

None of this changes the avatar itself. The avatar is created once, and each talking video is generated from it at 720p, with the 4 to 60 second duration window and three quality tiers. Timeline is a separate step that only arranges the finished files.

What 720p to 1080p does

Timeline scales the source to the output frame; it does not add detail. A 9:16 avatar clip at 720p is 720x1280, and filling a 1080x1920 frame with it is an upscale by 1.5. On a phone that looks fine for a talking head, and on a big screen it looks softer than the 1080p b-roll you may cut around it. If that matters, mix the avatar with shorter close shots and put the presenter in a smaller part of the frame.

A minimal body

This puts one avatar clip on the timeline with its own audio as the voice track. Replace the URLs with your hosted files. Run /v1/timeline-1.0/plan first; it is unbilled and returns the problems before you pay.

Timeline refuses some inputs, which is why the plan step exists: the first video slot must start at 0, there can be up to 200 video slots and up to 20 audio parts, and more than 8 adjacent fades are refused. A one-slot episode is far inside every limit, so the plan is a cheap check that your URLs are reachable.

{
  "audio": {
    "duration_seconds": 30,
    "parts": [
      { "source_url": "https://media.sume.com/your-avatar.mp4", "start": 0, "duration": 30 }
    ]
  },
  "video": [
    {
      "source_url": "https://media.sume.com/your-avatar.mp4",
      "start": 0,
      "duration": 30,
      "fit": "cover"
    }
  ]
}

Check the field names

The body above follows the shape we read in the Timeline docs, but the audio and video fields have more options than this example uses (transitions, soundtrack with duck_db, up to 20 audio parts and up to 200 video slots). Confirm names on the Timeline page and send it to /plan before the first paid render.

A rule of thumb for the fee: a 30-second episode rounds up to one output minute, so the Timeline step is $0.10 on top of the avatar video. A 40-episode season of such files is $4.00 of Timeline fees, which is small next to the avatar seconds themselves.