Video To Music

Sonilo Video-to-Music

Hand Sonilo a finished video and it composes an original score to the cut — pacing, motion, and emotion matched, with transitions and beat drops aligned to the edit, at exactly the video's length. This is Sonilo's flagship capability. Every track is licensed (music licensed via Shutterstock) and cleared for commercial use on social, brand content, and advertising.

Setup: See the setup-api-key skill to connect the Sonilo MCP server and authenticate — sonilo login (no key) or SONILO_API_KEY.

⚠️ Cost: every tool below makes an API call that may incur charges. Only call it when the user has actually asked for a generation. Check get_account_services (see the account skill) if you're unsure whether free-trial runs remain.

Transport: MCP or CLI

Pick one at the start of the session and stay on it. Do not mix the two inside a single job, and do not announce the choice.

1. Sonilo MCP tools visible in this session (video_to_music and friends) — use them. This is the preferred path: it needs no shell, and it is the only one that survives a very long generation. If a call fails to authenticate — rather than failing on its inputs — this transport is not usable in this session: go to 2 instead of retrying it.
2. No usable Sonilo MCP tools, but sonilo account exits 0 — use the CLI commands below. Same API, same account, same credential file. Probe with sonilo account, not sonilo whoami: whoami exits 0 even when signed out, so it cannot tell the two states apart.
3. Neither — stop and run the setup-api-key skill. Do not call api.sonilo.com with curl to work around it; both transports handle uploads, polling and retries that a bare request does not.

Quick Start

MCP tool call (recommended)

video_to_music(
    video_path="~/Desktop/trailer.mp4",
    prompt="Build suspense, then resolve with a warm cinematic finish"
)

Saves the generated file(s) to SONILO_MCP_BASE_PATH (~/Desktop by default) and returns the saved path(s) as text.

Python (pip install sonilo)

from sonilo import Sonilo

client = Sonilo()  # reads SONILO_API_KEY

score = client.video_to_music.generate(video="trailer.mp4", prompt="Build suspense, then resolve with a warm cinematic finish")
score.save("score.m4a")

# video_to_video_music: get the video back with the music muxed in
video = client.video_to_video_music.generate(video="trailer.mp4", prompt="cinematic, uplifting")
video.save("scored.mp4")

preserve_speech=True on video_to_music requires the async path — use generate_async() instead of generate() to get the extra vocals/mux/ducked outputs; see sonilo-python's README for the full pattern.

JavaScript / TypeScript (npm install sonilo)

import { SoniloClient } from "sonilo";

const client = new SoniloClient(); // reads SONILO_API_KEY

const score = await client.videoToMusic.generate({
  video: "./trailer.mp4",
  prompt: "Build suspense, then resolve with a warm cinematic finish",
});

// video_to_video_music: get the video back with the music muxed in
const video = await client.videoToVideoMusic.generate({
  video: "./trailer.mp4",
  prompt: "cinematic, uplifting",
});

preserveSpeech: true on videoToMusic requires the async path — use .submit() + client.tasks.wait() instead of .generate(); see sonilo-js's README for the full pattern.

CLI (npm install -g sonilo-cli or pip install sonilo-cli)

sonilo video-to-music --video trailer.mp4 --prompt "Build suspense, then resolve with a warm cinematic finish" --output score.m4a

--format wav, --preserve-speech, and --isolate-vocals each switch video-to-music to the async submit-and-poll path.

# the muxed video, from the CLI
sonilo video-to-video-music --video trailer.mp4 --prompt "cinematic, uplifting" --output scored.mp4

cURL (raw REST API, no MCP host)

curl -X POST "https://api.sonilo.com/v1/video-to-music" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SONILO_API_KEY" \
  -F "video=@trailer.mp4" \
  -F "prompt=Build suspense, then resolve with a warm cinematic finish" \
  --output score.m4a

video_to_music also accepts a video_url form field instead of an uploaded file — pass one or the other, never both.

Tools

Parameters

Stems

stems=true on video_to_music additionally returns each generated track split into four separated instrument tracks — drums, bass, vocals, other — free of charge. The full mix is untouched; the stems arrive alongside it in the task result as a stems array next to audio:

"stems": [
  {
    "stream_index": 0,
    "drums":  { "url": "…", "content_type": "audio/mp4", "file_size": 2913044 },
    "bass":   { "url": "…", "content_type": "audio/mp4", "file_size": 2870211 },
    "vocals": { "url": "…", "content_type": "audio/mp4", "file_size": 2794560 },
    "other":  { "url": "…", "content_type": "audio/mp4", "file_size": 3011830 }
  }
]

What matters when you use it:

• It splits the GENERATED music, never the video's own audio. The vocals stem is whatever singing the generated score contains — usually near-silent, since scores are mostly instrumental, and that is correct behavior, not a bug. To get the source speech isolated, use preserve_speech (a different feature) instead.
• Async only on REST. stems=true requires mode=async (a 400 otherwise): you get a 202 + task_id and poll /v1/tasks/{task_id}. The MCP tools are always async, so on the hosted server the param just works.
• Available on every surface (verified 2026-08-17): REST, the hosted MCP server, the local sonilo-mcp package (>= 0.18.0), the SDKs (sonilo npm >= 0.16.0, PyPI >= 0.15.0), and the CLIs (--stems, npm sonilo-cli >= 0.15.0, PyPI sonilo-cli >= 0.14.0).
• Match stems to tracks by stream_index, never by array position. A stream whose separation failed is simply absent, so stems can be shorter than audio.
• stems_error is not a failed generation. When separation failed wholly or partly, or was skipped, the task carries a stems_error string — possibly alongside a partial stems array. The generation itself succeeded and every audio URL is valid: treat missing stems as a missing extra, never as a reason to retry or refund.
• Timing: separation runs after generation finishes — typically another 2–6 min, giving up after 30 min (then stems_error).
• The four stem names are fixed (htdemucs separation): melodic instruments — piano, synths, guitar, strings — land in other.
• Formats: stems normally follow output_format; trust each stem's content_type for what was actually delivered.