Shipping Async Video Background Removal at $0.10/sec

Why async matters for video I've been running useKnockout - a background removal API that processes images in ~200ms - for a few months. Images are fast enough to handle synchronously: POST a file, wait 200ms, get a PNG back. Video is different. Even a 5-second clip at 30fps is 150 frames. At 200ms per frame, that's 30 seconds of processing. You can't hold an HTTP connection open for 30 seconds and call it a good API. So today I shipped POST /video/remove - async video background removal that returns a job ID immediately, processes in the background, and gives you ProRes 4444 (RGB+alpha) when it's done. What shipped As of v0.11.0 (July 10, 2026): POST /video/remove - upload a video, get a job ID back GET /jobs/{job_id} - poll for status, download the result when ready ProRes 4444 output - RGB with full alpha channel, ready to drop into Premiere/Final Cut/DaVinci Node SDK videoRemove() and getJob() in v0.7.0 Python SDK video_remove() and get_job() in v0.7.0 Billing is a dedicated video.seconds meter at $0.10/sec (different from the per-image rate), with a 15-second cap to keep costs predictable. How to use it (Node SDK) import { useKnockout } from ' useknockout-node ' ; import fs from ' fs ' ; const client = useKnockout ({ apiKey : process . env . KNOCKOUT_API_KEY }); // Submit the video const job = await client . videoRemove ({ file : fs . createReadStream ( ' ./input.mp4 ' ) }); console . log ( ' Job ID: ' , job . id ); // Poll until done let status = await client . getJob ( job . id ); while ( status . status === ' processing ' ) { await new Promise ( resolve => setTimeout ( resolve , 2000 )); status = await client . getJob ( job . id ); } if ( status . status === ' completed ' ) { // Download the ProRes 4444 result const video = await fetch ( status . result_url ); const buffer = await video . arrayBuffer (); fs . writeFileSync ( ' ./output.mov ' , Buffer . from ( buffer )); } The job object includes duration_seconds (billed amount), status ( processing / complet