Remove a video background: Firefly vs Sume options

Adobe Firefly's September 2026 update can remove the background from a video across the whole clip. The Sume documentation lists rmbg_create as a cutout tool and describes no video background-removal tool, so for a Sume clip you either generate it against a clean backdrop or cut out individual stills.

What Adobe announced

The Adobe community post for the September 18, 2026 Firefly update says Firefly can remove the background from videos across the entire clip, with automatic subject detection. Use Firefly if that is what the job needs.

What the Sume docs list

The hosted MCP overview lists rmbg_create among paid generation tools, next to image_upscale_create and video_upscale_create. The tool docs say cutouts are rmbg_create. The docs read for this post do not describe it as accepting video, and they do not list a video matting tool. Video filter is a pixel pass (dim, crop), not a background remover.

Generate against a clean backdrop

If you are making the clip on Sume anyway, describe the backdrop in the prompt, or supply a first frame whose background is already plain. Then edit the result in the tool you use for compositing. Whether the output is easy to key depends on the prompt and model, so test one clip first.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/videos \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: clean-backdrop-001" \
  -d '{
    "model": "sume/auto",
    "prompt": "A person waves at the camera against a flat, even green studio backdrop, no shadows on the wall",
    "aspect_ratio": "16:9",
    "duration": 5
  }'

Poll the returned polling URL or GET /v1/jobs/{id}/status, then download the MP4. Sume results are ordinary MP4 artifacts; the docs do not describe an alpha channel for video.