Face swap quality tiers: pick for a 12-second clip

For a 12-second clip, any of the three tiers is in range: Avatar Face Swap (Beta) wants a source video of about 4 to 15 seconds with usable audio, and quality must be standard, plus or max. The docs do not say how the tiers differ, so choose by rendering the same clip at each tier and comparing.

What the docs fix

The endpoint is POST /v1/models/sume/avatar-face-swap/v1.0/runs. It needs a ready avatar handle and a public HTTPS source video. There is no default for quality on this endpoint.

What the docs do not say

There is no description of what separates standard, plus and max, and no price per tier in the face-swap page. Do not assume that max is better for your clip or that it costs a fixed multiple. Read the live catalog and OpenAPI for pricing, and treat any difference as something to measure.

Run all three on one clip

A 12-second clip fits inside the 4 to 15 second target, so it is a good test unit. Use a separate Idempotency-Key per tier, because they are different requests. Prompts, aspect ratio, duration knobs and provider fields are not supported on this endpoint.

for Q in standard plus max; do
  curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/models/sume/avatar-face-swap/v1.0/runs \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -H "Idempotency-Key: swap-12s-$Q" \
    -d "{\"avatar_handle\":\"studio_presenter\",\"video_url\":\"https://example.com/source-12s.mp4\",\"quality\":\"$Q\"}"
done

Compare and decide

Poll GET /v1/jobs/{id}/status and read GET /v1/jobs/{id}/result. Prefer resource_status for readiness and job_status for polling. Watch the clip at full size, check that the audio is intact, and compare the receipt for each tier.

• Keep the source clip, avatar and tier as your only variables.
• Judge faces in motion and at the cuts, not on a single frame.
• Pick the lowest tier that passes your own bar, since you pay for each run.

Source clip checklist

The source must be a fetchable public HTTPS URL. Localhost, private-network, non-HTTPS and signed or private URLs are rejected, and so are provider task URLs. A silent clip is a poor fit, because the Beta targets sources with usable audio.