Bike shop Black Friday clip: dim the footage so price text reads

A bike shop can keep Black Friday price text readable by dimming the footage first with Sume video filter, then burning cues over it with video captions. For a 5-second Wan 3.0 clip at 720p, the dim step is $0.02, the clip is $0.63 and the caption job $0.20, so one finished price-card clip is $0.85.

Black Friday is on November 27 this year, with Small Business Saturday on November 28 and Cyber Monday on November 30. Shoppers scroll quickly, and bright motion footage makes white text hard to read. A dim pass solves that without a design tool.

The dim op

Video filter takes one Sume-hosted clip and a program, returns a new MP4, and leaves the source alone. The dim op takes a single amount; the docs example uses 0.45. A crop op takes fractions of the frame. There is a free check endpoint, POST /v1/video-filter/check, that validates the program without billing, so run it first. The docs point to the live catalog for the price; the Sume rate card (read 2026-10-10) lists the encode at $0.02.

The clip must be a media.sume.com artifact or asset in your workspace. A clip you generate with Sume qualifies. A file from your own server does not, and the API will not fetch from the open internet.

Cues over the dimmed clip

Next, run video captions on the dimmed file. A generated clip with no speech fails the normal path with caption_no_speech, so send cues with text, start and end. Each cue is a price card: the bike, the price, the dates. Keep each on screen for at least two seconds. The captions job is $0.20 for videos up to 60 seconds and takes a public HTTPS URL. Use a style such as slam or punch that suits a bold price.

Choosing the dim amount

The docs example uses 0.45, which darkens the clip noticeably while leaving the bike visible. Try 0.3 for a gentle pass and 0.6 for a heavy one, and look at the result on a phone, not a monitor. The free check endpoint tells you whether the program is valid before you spend $0.02, but it does not tell you whether the clip looks good, so run one real dim and judge it.

Keep the bike in the upper two thirds of the frame and the lower third calm, since price cues usually sit low. When you generate the clip, say "empty dark floor in the lower third" in the prompt. Then your cues land on a quiet area instead of over the wheels.

Why not just use a bigger font

Burned captions already have an outline in most styles, but outlines cannot rescue white text over bright chrome and sunlight. Dimming the footage before the text goes on is a cheap fix, and it also makes the clip feel more like an evening sale, which suits the season. You pay $0.02 for the dim pass and keep the original clip for other uses, since the source does not change.

Pricing honesty

Do not put a price in a cue that your store has not set. The caption job burns exactly what you write, including a typo. Re-read the cues against your price list. Whether a price is a discount is your claim, so use the real regular price from your own records.

Test one clip before you make ten. The cost planning in the ten SKU pilot post shows how to cost a wider set, and the text-to-video Black Friday post covers the clip prompt.