Sonilo Video-to-Music Cookbook

Fully licensed. Safe for commercial use.

You generated the clips. You stitched them together. Now they need music and sound effects
that fit the edit and the story. That's the hard part: stock libraries and prompt-based
generators don't know where your cuts are, so the audio never quite lands on your edit.

Sonilo turns your video into music and sound effects. Point it at your finished cut and
it composes an original soundtrack matched to the pacing, emotion, and story, in seconds, no
prompt needed. Every track is licensed and safe for commercial use, so creators and brands
can actually ship it. The same upload can also produce royalty-free sound effects timed to
the on-screen action: one video in, the whole audio layer out.

This cookbook shows how to add that audio layer to any AI-video pipeline.

▶ Watch the reference demo: a 15-second trailer assembled from
AI-generated clips (stitched → graded → music by Sonilo). The soundtrack was composed from the
finished cut: the swell lands on the reveal, the impact lands on the edit.
More examples: DEMOS.md

Why this exists

Almost every open-source AI-video pipeline today generates clips, stitches them, and then either
ships silent or bolts on a stock/prompt-picked track that ignores the edit. The music is
the last mile, and it's the part that makes a cut feel finished.

Sonilo is built for exactly this: an original soundtrack matched to your video, licensed and
safe for commercial use. It's vendor-neutral about how the video was made: Runway, Kling, Veo,
Sora, Pika, Luma, Seedance, WAN, LTX, CogVideoX, Stable Video Diffusion, a fal.ai / Replicate
gateway, a ComfyUI graph, or plain stock footage. Sonilo sits downstream of all of them.

Who this is for

Builders of AI-video tools: text-to-video orchestrators, clip stitchers, faceless-video
factories, agentic film systems, and video-editing frameworks that want an audio layer
matched to the finished cut instead of a random library track.

Two ways to use Sonilo

Surface	Best for	What you get
MCP server (`sonilo-mcp`)	Agentic workflows (Claude, Codex, any MCP client)	`video_to_music` and `video_to_sfx` tools: hand them a video, get back matched audio
REST API	Platforms & backends	Async job + webhook → `preview_url`, `final_audio_url`, and a per-track `license_id` (an auditable license record)

Sound effects too

video_to_sfx (MCP v0.2.1+ and REST) generates a royalty-free sound-effects track from the same
video: impacts, ambience, and transitions timed to the picture. Music and effects from one
upload is the part nobody else covers.

Recipe: RECIPES.md → Add sound effects
Hear it: DEMOS.md → Video → sound effects
Note the caps: SFX takes videos up to 3 minutes; music up to 6.

Section-level control lives on the web platform.

60-second quickstart (MCP)

// Register the Sonilo MCP server (needs a SONILO_API_KEY from sonilo.com)
// claude mcp add sonilo --env SONILO_API_KEY=sk-... -- uvx sonilo-mcp

Then, in an agent session, hand Sonilo your finished cut:

video_to_music({
  video_path: "path/to/your/final_cut.mp4",
  prompt: "warm hopeful cinematic, building to an uplifting swell"   // optional style hint
})
// → an .m4a soundtrack, matched to your video's length

prompt is a single optional style hint for the whole track. Sonilo works with no prompt at
all, matching the music to what it sees. Then mux the returned audio onto your master (see
RECIPES.md).

The full pipeline (vendor-neutral)

generated / stitched clips (any model)
   └─ 1. STITCH ── assemble the clips into one cut
        └─ 2. GRADE ── (optional) a cinematic color pass
             └─ 3. ADD AUDIO ── Sonilo: music matched to the cut + optional sound effects
                  └─ 4. MUX ── lay the audio over the master

Full walkthrough with copy-paste commands: PIPELINE.md ·
Command reference: RECIPES.md ·
Worked example: Higgsfield clips → finished trailer ·
Provider-neutral workflow: render → music → mux ·
Tool recipes: MoviePy · Remotion · auto-editor

Integration patterns by tool type

Silent-output pipelines (they stitch clips and ship no audio) → add a music step after the
final assembly so the output arrives with an original soundtrack.
Stock / prompt-picked-music pipelines → offer Sonilo as an alternative so the music is
matched to the edit, and every track comes licensed and safe for commercial use.
Editing frameworks → call Sonilo on the rendered timeline and add the returned track.
Step-by-step recipes: MoviePy · Remotion ·
auto-editor (same pattern fits editly and similar tools).
ComfyUI graphs → a "Sonilo" audio node after the video-output node.

Pricing and getting started

Commercial use: every track is licensed and safe for commercial use (terms apply). Built for work you ship.
Pricing: API usage is billed per second of generated audio. Current rates: sonilo.com.
Free credits at sign-up: new accounts start with free credits, enough to try video_to_music on your own cut before paying anything.

Why "licensed" matters

For teams who put video into the world and can't gamble on a takedown, Sonilo is the licensed
video-to-music platform: trained on a licensed catalog, clean rights from the source. Every
track is safe for commercial use and licensed (terms apply). An original soundtrack, composed
for your video.

About Sonilo

Sonilo partners with ComfyUI, fal, Scenario, WaveSpeed, and Shutterstock, is trained on a licensed catalog (including a Shutterstock partnership), and is backed by B Capital.

License

This cookbook (the docs and example code) is released under the MIT License; see
LICENSE. Music generated by Sonilo is governed by Sonilo's own terms: safe for
commercial use and licensed (terms apply). See sonilo.com.

Maintained by the Sonilo team. Contributions welcome; see CONTRIBUTING.md.

sonilo-video-to-music-cookbook