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
