H3 Max Recast re-roll budget: 1, 2 or 3 takes per final clip

Plan on more than one take per final H3 Max Recast clip, and price the extra takes up front. On Sume a 10 second swap costs $3.75 at 768p and $5.625 at 1080p, and since the request has no seed to pin, a retake is a new paid job: two takes cost $7.50 and three cost $11.25 at 768p.

The multiples below are plain arithmetic, not a claim about how often a swap misses. Set your own take count from a test slice.

Why there is no free retake

fal's schema lists a seed field for Recast and returns the seed used (fal H3 Max Recast API schema). Sume's h3-max-recast adapter forwards only the source video, the reference photos, the optional prompt and the resolution, so a rerun is a fresh generation and a fresh reservation. Failed jobs release their reservation where applicable, but a job that completes and looks wrong has been captured.

Three budgeting patterns

The cheapest way to buy a good take is rarely to run 1080p three times.

• Draft at 768p, finish at 1080p. A 10 second draft plus a 1080p final is $3.75 + $5.625 = $9.375, against $11.25 for two 1080p takes. This only works if the 768p result predicts the 1080p one, so check on a short slice first.
• Change something between takes. Another photo of the same person, a clearer prompt about who becomes whom, or a trim that removes a bad shot gives a different result for the same price. Re-running unchanged inputs is the weakest use of a retake.
• Reserve a re-roll line in the quote: 1.5 takes per clip is a number a client can read, and it avoids a budget conversation after the first delivery.

Keep every take

Each result is mirrored to a media.sume.com URL. Store the URL and the job id for every take, including the ones you reject. When a client asks for the earlier version, the cheapest retake is the one you did not have to run. Jobs are readable by the key that created them, so keep the ids in your own records (Jobs and results).

Putting numbers on it

Pick a take count per clip and multiply it through the budget table. At 768p a five second clip is $1.875, so three takes is $5.625, and a thirty second clip is $11.25 a take. Quote the client the final-clip price with the retake allowance built in, not the single-take price.

Track the actual number of takes on real jobs for a few weeks. If your average is closer to one than three, lower the allowance. The point of the allowance is to make the retake decision cheap to approve, not to spend the whole line.