Upscale a 90-second video with a 30-second cap: trim, upscale, join

To upscale a 90-second video on Sume you split it into three clips of 30 seconds or less, upscale each as its own job, and join the results on a timeline. Sume Video Upscale reserves from input seconds at $0.009 a second and accepts a duration_seconds of 1 to 30 per job, so one job cannot take the whole clip. The pipeline below costs about $1.08 and uses three Sume tools.

The cost of each step

Trim, audio detach and timeline run on the worker's ffmpeg with no model inference, which is why they are flat or per-minute prices.

The order of operations

Timeline wants workspace media URLs, so if an upscale result is not already one, import it again before the final step.

• Import the source with POST /v1/media-imports, because trim and timeline accept only workspace media URLs.
• Trim three ranges, 0 to 30, 30 to 60 and 60 to 90, with the default exact precision so each cut is frame accurate.
• Upscale each trimmed clip with a factor you choose between 1.1 and 4. The endpoint validates video_url as a public HTTPS URL.
• Detach the original audio as one file and use it as the timeline spine with audio.duration_seconds set to 90.
• Place the three upscaled clips on the timeline at starts 0, 30 and 60 with no transition.

One caution on seams

Each chunk is upscaled on its own, so the enhancement can differ slightly between the last frame of one chunk and the first of the next. Cut at a natural pause or a scene change rather than at an arbitrary second, and check each seam before you ship. If the source has pauses, video inspect can return a transcript with timings to choose cut points.

Cheaper variants

The total scales with input seconds, not with the factor, so a 4x upscale of a 90-second clip costs the same $0.81 as a 2x upscale under the published rate.

• Upscale only the shots that will be shown large, and leave the rest.
• Trim dead air first: each second removed saves $0.009 on the upscale.
• Run one chunk end to end before you queue the other two.