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From a new key to a ranked shortlist for one of your videos. About five minutes.
1

Create a key

In the developer portal, add a payment method under Billing, then click Create key. Copy it when it appears, because it’s shown only once.If we sent you a credit code, redeem it under Billing instead and skip the card: a live credit grant funds your calls and a trial account can hold two live keys. See Starting credits. Otherwise a key needs a card behind it, because every call runs real analysis against the licensed catalog. You’re billed per call at the rates in Metering & pricing.
2

Ingest a video

Point Cue at a public video URL: a direct link, or a share link (Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, a CDN) that redirects to the file. Cue fetches the clip, analyzes it, and returns a video_id to poll.
202
3

Wait until the ingest finishes

Poll the video until its status is ready.
200
status is processing, ready or failed. On a failure reason names the cause in a form you can branch on, such as insufficient_credits. On every other status it is null.
4

Match the music

Now ask for a shortlist.
This answers one of two ways, so branch on the status code.A video Cue has already analyzed under your account’s engine comes back 200 with the lane:
200
Anything else comes back 202 with a job:
202
Poll GET /v1/match/jobs/run_9f2c… until status is complete. The completed job carries the same lane as the 200 above, plus job_id and status. Polling is free and the match is billed once, when the job completes.
A freshly ingested video usually takes the 202 branch. ready means the ingest finished, not that the engine analysis behind /v1/match has landed. Cue flips the row to ready first and persists that analysis after. So write the 202 branch on day one rather than treating it as the rare case.
Each track_id resolves in your catalog, and it is the Soundstripe song id. Add ?expand=full to the match request for titles, tags, energy and the candidate pool inline.

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Where to go next

You now have a video_id and a track_id. Everything else takes one or both.

Match

Steer the shortlist, or match straight from a URL.

Find where to cut

Sync points for a track against your clip.

Loop over long video

Cover a clip that runs longer than the song.

Underscore a script

Match music to words, with no video at all.

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What it costs

Every call is metered. See Metering & pricing for the per-call rates. Analysis is charged once per video at ingest and reused by every later match, sync and loop against it, so the expensive step happens once. A call that errors bills nothing. Set a monthly spend cap in the portal if you want a hard ceiling.