seek fast or precise: which to use for video inspect stills

Use seek: "precise", the default, when a still must match its timestamp, and seek: "fast" when you are only skimming a clip. Fast snaps each still to the keyframe at or before its instant and skips the decode, so it can show a moment earlier by up to one group of pictures, roughly 0 to 5 seconds on typical sources. It is never later.

This is from the Video inspect docs, read 2026-09-29.

What changes with fast?

How do I set it?

seek lives on the frames object, which must also carry exactly one of at[] or fps.

With fast, each grid carries seek: "fast", sample_times are the instants the tiles actually show, and requested_times are the ones you asked for. Read sample_times if you need to know what you are looking at.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-inspect \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: inspect-fast-001" \
  -d '{"video_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/talk.mp4","frames":{"fps":0.5,"seek":"fast"}}'

What are the other frame settings?

• Omit frames for 8 mid-bin stills (1 fps on a clip under 8 seconds).
• frames: false returns the probe only.
• max_edge is 64 to 2160, default 768; format is jpeg or png.
• At most 24 stills per call; source up to 1800 seconds.

Is inspect billed?

Probe and stills are unbilled. Only the optional transcript reserves.