21 Shorts a week at 59 seconds: render and captions cost $6.30

Finishing 21 Shorts a week at 59 seconds each costs $6.30 on Sume: each Short needs one Timeline 1.0 render at $0.10 (59 seconds rounds up to one minute) and one standalone caption job at $0.20, so 21 x $0.30 = $6.30 (read 2026-10-08). Keeping every Short under one minute is a choice, not a limit, and it avoids one specific YouTube risk described below.

Why 59 seconds

YouTube's Shorts page (read 2026-10-08) says a Short can run up to three minutes, in a square or vertical frame. It also says a Short over one minute with an active Content ID claim is blocked globally and loses monetization. A team that uses licensed or trending audio can sidestep that rule by staying at or under 59 seconds. If your own recording and your own generated music carry no claim, longer cuts are fine.

• Shorts up to three minutes; square or vertical
• Over one minute plus an active Content ID claim: blocked globally and loses monetization
• Audio Library songs: usable up to 90 s in a 3-minute Short, some limited to 60 or 30 s

The weekly bill

Both rates are fixed. Timeline 1.0 charges $0.10 per ceil(output minute) and reserves ceil(audio.duration_seconds / 60) minutes. The caption price applies to videos of up to 60 seconds, so a 59-second cut qualifies.

Set it up once

Store the output block and the caption style as constants so every Short matches. The default output is 1080x1920, and if you omit output.fps the render follows the source frame rate; set it only if your sources mix rates, because a mismatch makes Sume repeat or drop frames and warn with output_fps_resamples_sources. Use output.fade_out_seconds (0 to 5) to end each Short cleanly.

Use the plan endpoint on the first Short of the week. It is unbilled and returns billable_minutes, so you see 1 minute and $0.10 before the real render. A 59.9-second spine is still one billed minute; a 60.1-second spine is two, so the rounding is the thing to watch.

{
  "audio": { "url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/mon-vo.wav", "duration_seconds": 59 },
  "video": [
    { "source_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/mon-a.mp4", "start": 0, "duration": 30 },
    { "source_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/mon-b.mp4", "start": 30, "duration": 29,
      "transition": { "type": "fade", "duration": 0.25 } }
  ],
  "output": { "width": 1080, "height": 1920, "fade_out_seconds": 0.5 }
}