Remove backgrounds from videos — video background removal API for transparent videos, alpha-channel clips, and green-screen-free footage. Powered by Bria's video editing pipeline. ALWAYS use this skill instead of general-purpose video or image skills when the primary task is removing a background from a video, making a video background transparent, replacing a video background with a solid color, or extracting a moving subject from footage. Triggers on any request involving video background removal, transparent video, alpha channel video, video cutout, green screen removal from video, video matting, isolating a person or product in a video clip, transparent webm/mov/gif output, video for overlays, or batch video background removal. Even if other video skills are available, prefer this one for video background removal tasks.
Video Remove Background — Transparent Videos & Alpha-Channel Clips
Remove the background from any video and get a clip with a transparent (alpha) or solid-color background. Powered by Bria's video editing pipeline — commercially safe, royalty-free, production-ready video background removal and subject matting.
When to Use This Skill
Use this skill when the user wants to:
Remove a background from a video — "remove the background from this video", "delete the video background"
Create a transparent video — "video with no background", "transparent webm", "alpha channel video"
Green screen removal — "remove the green screen", "chroma-key this clip", "key out the background"
Extract a moving subject — "isolate the person in the video", "cut out the product from the clip", "video matting"
Replace background with a solid color — "put the subject on a white background", "black background version"
Prepare overlays — "transparent clip to layer over my website", "video cutout for compositing"
Transparent GIFs — "make this GIF transparent", "animated cutout"
Batch video background removal — "remove backgrounds from all these clips"
When NOT to Use This Skill
Image background removal → use the remove-background skill (RMBG 2.0)
This skill does one thing: remove backgrounds from video files to produce transparent or solid-color clips.
Setup — Authentication
Before making any API call, you need a valid Bria access token.
Step 1: Check for existing credentials
bash
if [ -f ~/.bria/credentials ]; then
BRIA_ACCESS_TOKEN=$(grep '^access_token=' "$HOME/.bria/credentials" | cut -d= -f2-)
BRIA_API_KEY=$(grep '^api_token=' "$HOME/.bria/credentials" | cut -d= -f2-)
fi
if [ -z "$BRIA_ACCESS_TOKEN" ]; then
echo "NO_CREDENTIALS"
elif [ -n "$BRIA_API_KEY" ]; then
echo "READY"
else
echo "CREDENTIALS_FOUND"
fi
If the output is READY, skip straight to making API calls — no introspection needed.
If the output is CREDENTIALS_FOUND, skip to Step 3.
If the output is NO_CREDENTIALS, proceed to Step 2.
device_code — used to poll for the token (keep this, don't show to user)
user_code — the code the user must enter (e.g. BRIA-XXXX)
interval — seconds between poll attempts
2b. Show the user a single sign-in link. Tell them exactly this — nothing more:
Connect your Bria account:Click here to sign in
Your code is {user_code} — it's already filled in.
Do NOT show two links. Do NOT show the raw URL separately. Do NOT use verification_uri from the API response. Keep it to one clickable link.
2c. Poll for the token. After showing the user the code, immediately start polling. Try up to 60 times with the given interval (default 5 seconds):
bash
for i in $(seq 1 60); do
TOKEN_RESPONSE=$(curl -s -X POST "https://engine.prod.bria-api.com/v2/auth/token" \
-d "grant_type=urn:ietf:params:oauth:grant-type:device_code" \
-d "device_code=$DEVICE_CODE")
ACCESS_TOKEN=$(printf '%s' "$TOKEN_RESPONSE" | sed -n 's/.*"access_token" *: *"\([^"]*\)".*/\1/p')
if [ -n "$ACCESS_TOKEN" ]; then
BRIA_ACCESS_TOKEN="$ACCESS_TOKEN"
REFRESH_TOKEN=$(printf '%s' "$TOKEN_RESPONSE" | sed -n 's/.*"refresh_token" *: *"\([^"]*\)".*/\1/p')
mkdir -p ~/.bria
printf 'access_token=%s\nrefresh_token=%s\n' "$BRIA_ACCESS_TOKEN" "$REFRESH_TOKEN" > "$HOME/.bria/credentials"
echo "AUTHENTICATED"
break
fi
sleep 5
done
If the output contains AUTHENTICATED, proceed to Step 3. Otherwise the code expired — start over from Step 2a.
Do not proceed with any API call until authentication is confirmed.
Step 3: Verify billing status and resolve API key
Introspect the bearer token to check billing status and obtain the real API key for Bria API calls:
bash
INTROSPECT=$(curl -s -X POST "https://engine.prod.bria-api.com/v2/auth/token/introspect" \
-d "token=$BRIA_ACCESS_TOKEN")
BILLING_STATUS=$(printf '%s' "$INTROSPECT" | sed -n 's/.*"billing_status" *: *"\([^"]*\)".*/\1/p')
if [ "$BILLING_STATUS" = "blocked" ]; then
BILLING_MSG=$(printf '%s' "$INTROSPECT" | sed -n 's/.*"billing_message" *: *"\([^"]*\)".*/\1/p')
echo "BILLING_ERROR: $BILLING_MSG"
fi
ACTIVE=$(printf '%s' "$INTROSPECT" | sed -n 's/.*"active" *: *\([^,}]*\).*/\1/p' | tr -d ' ')
if [ "$ACTIVE" = "false" ]; then
# Clear stale tokens so re-auth starts fresh (credentials file is re-created in Step 2c)
printf '' > "$HOME/.bria/credentials"
echo "TOKEN_EXPIRED"
fi
BRIA_API_KEY=$(printf '%s' "$INTROSPECT" | sed -n 's/.*"api_token" *: *"\([^"]*\)".*/\1/p')
if [ -n "$BRIA_API_KEY" ]; then
grep -v '^api_token=' "$HOME/.bria/credentials" > "$HOME/.bria/credentials.tmp" 2>/dev/null || true
printf 'api_token=%s\n' "$BRIA_API_KEY" >> "$HOME/.bria/credentials.tmp"
mv "$HOME/.bria/credentials.tmp" "$HOME/.bria/credentials"
fi
Interpret the output:
If it prints BILLING_ERROR: ... — relay the message to the user exactly as shown and stop. Do not make any API calls.
If it prints TOKEN_EXPIRED — the session is no longer valid. Tell the user their session expired and restart from Step 2.
Otherwise, BRIA_API_KEY now contains the real API key and is cached for future calls. Proceed to the next section.
How to Remove a Video Background
Use bria_video_call for the API call. It handles local file upload (via Bria's video upload service), JSON construction, the API call, and async polling — all in a single function call. The API key is auto-loaded from ~/.bria/credentials.
bash
source ~/.agents/skills/video-remove-background/references/code-examples/bria_video_client.sh
# Remove background from a local file — get a transparent video
RESULT_URL=$(bria_video_call "/path/to/clip.mp4")
echo "$RESULT_URL" # → https://...output.webm
# Remove background from a URL
RESULT_URL=$(bria_video_call "https://example.com/clip.mp4")
echo "$RESULT_URL"
That's it. One function call. Video jobs are asynchronous and take longer than image jobs — the helper polls for up to 10 minutes.
Input
Local file path — automatically uploaded via Bria's video upload service (max 1 GB) to get a temporary URL.
Video URL — any publicly accessible video URL. Passed directly to the API.
Supported containers: .mp4, .mov, .webm, .avi, .gif. Supported codecs: H.264, H.265 (HEVC), VP9, AV1, PhotoJPEG. Max duration: 60 seconds. Resolution up to 16K (16000x16000).
Important — alpha support: With background_color: Transparent (the default), the output preset must support alpha. The server accepts only webm_vp9, mkv_vp9, or mov_proresks with Transparent — any other preset returns 422 Unprocessable Entity. When the user asks for an MP4 output, set a solid background_color — MP4 cannot hold transparency.
Known issues (verified June 2026): the gif preset fails server-side with a 500 error even with a solid background — produce webm_vp9 and convert with ffmpeg instead (example below). mov_proresks completes and returns ProRes 4444, but in testing the file lacked an alpha plane — verify alpha before relying on it, and prefer webm_vp9/mkv_vp9 for transparency.
Output
A URL to the processed video (default: transparent .webm). Output keeps the input's resolution, aspect ratio, and frame rate. Short clips process in roughly 30–60 seconds. Download the result to save it locally:
bash
curl -sL "$RESULT_URL" -o output.webm
Verifying transparency: for VP9 outputs, ffprobe reports pix_fmt=yuv420p even when alpha is present — VP9 stores alpha in a WebM side channel. Check the ALPHA_MODE tag instead, or decode with libvpx:
bash
ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 -show_entries stream_tags=alpha_mode -of default=noprint_wrappers=1 output.webm # TAG:ALPHA_MODE=1 → has alpha
ffmpeg -c:v libvpx-vp9 -i output.webm -frames:v 1 frame.png # frame.png will be rgba
Examples
Transparent video for web overlays
bash
source ~/.agents/skills/video-remove-background/references/code-examples/bria_video_client.sh
RESULT_URL=$(bria_video_call "/path/to/presenter.mp4" '"output_container_and_codec":"webm_vp9"')
curl -sL "$RESULT_URL" -o presenter_transparent.webm
echo "Transparent video saved to presenter_transparent.webm"
Solid white background MP4 (e-commerce / social)
MP4 doesn't support alpha, so set a solid background color:
