Video Eraser (subtitles, watermarks, logos)

The two modes

The same eraseRatioLocation means two different things depending on the mode, and this is the easy mistake: box a text-free logo in auto mode and nothing changes at all, because there is no text inside the box to find. To erase something that is not text, switch to manual.

Measured 2026-10-18 on a synthetic clip: a semi-transparent text watermark ("@demo_channel") came out cleanly in manual mode, and also in auto mode with eraseType "text"; a solid-colour graphic logo, boxed 30-50% larger, was left essentially untouched by manual mode. Try a short segment before running a whole video when the mark is a graphic logo.

Create a task

POST /api/v1/video/generations — async: create, then poll the same endpoint for the result.

# ── Region mode — remove a watermark / corner logo ──────────────────────
# Box the mark with normalized 0-1 coordinates (fractions of width/height).
curl -X POST https://api.apimodels.app/v1/video/generations \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "subtitle-erase",
    "video_url": "https://example.com/clip-with-watermark.mp4",
    "eraseMode": "manual",
    "eraseRatioLocation": [
      { "topLeftX": 0.70, "topLeftY": 0.02, "bottomRightX": 1.0, "bottomRightY": 0.20 }
    ]
  }'

# ⚠️ Draw the box GENEROUSLY — about 30-50% larger than the mark itself.
# A box cropped tight to the mark very often returns the video unchanged.
# For a corner logo, run the box out to the frame edges as above.

# ── Automatic mode — remove hardcoded subtitles (no box needed) ─────────
curl -X POST https://api.apimodels.app/v1/video/generations \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "subtitle-erase",
    "video_url": "https://example.com/clip-with-subtitles.mp4",
    "eraseType": "subtitle"
  }'

# Poll until state == "completed" — data.resultUrls[0] is the cleaned video.
# Result files are kept 30 days.
curl "https://api.apimodels.app/v1/video/generations?task_id=TASK_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

Request parameters

Both spellings are accepted: eraseMode / erase_mode, eraseType / erase_type, eraseRatioLocation / erase_ratio_location, clipFilter / clip_filter. If both are sent, the camelCase one wins. clipFilter.mode is case-insensitive.

What a failure looks like

• Rejected at creation: the HTTP status is the error code and the body is { code, msg }. 400 means a bad request (no video_url, an invalid value, manual mode without boxes) or a video whose duration cannot be read (private or expired link); 401 means an invalid API key; 402 means insufficient balance. No task is created and nothing is charged.
• Created but failed during processing: polling GET ?task_id= still returns HTTP 200 and code 200, and the failure is in data — data.state is "failed", data.failCode / data.failMsg give the reason, data.credits is 0 (fully refunded), and data.retryable says whether a retry is worth it. Typical causes: the source video could not be imported (the link expired mid-job), or processing ran past the 60-minute limit. With callback_url set, the callback carries the same data.

Billing and limits

• $0.015 per second, billed on the INPUT video duration, charged only on success and refunded on failure. 30 seconds = $0.45, 3 minutes = $2.70.
• Limiting the job with clipFilter does NOT reduce the price — the whole file still has to be decoded and re-encoded.
• Processing is measured in minutes: a 30–60 second clip usually takes around 10 minutes, most finish within 16, and an occasional one takes longer. Nearly all of it is the per-frame text detection and inpainting itself, not queueing — this is normal, not a stalled task. Use callback_url rather than holding a long poll.
• There is no hard duration limit, but a task that has not finished within 60 minutes fails as a timeout (fully refunded). Keep each request to 60 seconds or less, and split longer videos into segments of up to 60 seconds.
• The source URL must stay reachable for the whole job — give presigned URLs a lifetime of at least 30 minutes (import usually finishes in seconds, but an expired URL fails the task).
• Output resolution matches the input, capped at 1080p.
• Result files are kept for 30 days — download or re-host anything you need to keep.
• A mark that stays put is the easy case; for one that moves, give several boxes covering its path or split the timeline with clipFilter. A mark drifting across the whole frame is not a good fit.
• Whether removing a watermark is lawful depends entirely on the footage and is your call: cleaning your own or licensed material is ordinary post-production, stripping a mark from someone else's copyrighted work to republish it is not.

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