45-minute webinar into YouTube Shorts: Sume trim takes 30 minutes

A 45-minute webinar is too long to send to Sume video trim in one piece. Trim reads a source of at most 1800 seconds (30 minutes) and returns a cut of at most 900 seconds, so a longer file fails with source_duration_exceeded. Split the recording into parts under 30 minutes first, then cut each Short from a part. YouTube's own help page says Shorts creation tools make videos up to 3 minutes long, so each cut needs only a start and a duration of 180 or less.

Sume's side comes from Video trim and Media inputs; YouTube's side comes from Create YouTube Shorts. All were read on 2026-10-06.

What are the trim limits?

Trim works on one clip that already lives on media.sume.com in your workspace. It does not fetch from the open internet, so you import the file first with POST /v1/media-imports. You send start plus exactly one of end or duration.

How do I plan the cuts?

Cut the webinar into two or more parts outside Sume or with trim itself: a trim of the first 1500 seconds is one job, and a second trim starting at 1500 is another. The 900-second output cap means each part you create with trim is at most 15 minutes, so a 30-minute source takes two trim jobs before you cut Shorts. Then run one trim per Short from those parts.

Pick precision on purpose. The default exact is a frame-accurate re-encode. keyframe is a stream copy and the cut can start a GOP early, so re-base your times against actual_start_seconds in the result.

• Each trim is its own job with its own Idempotency-Key.
• Put each result URL into a later step; the result is a new artf_ file, never the source.
• Burn captions last, on the finished cut, with the captions endpoint.

Does a 3-minute Short cost more than a 30-second one?

The docs list trim at a flat public rate of $0.02 per job, with no provider inference, only worker ffmpeg. Confirm the live number in the catalog before you budget a batch, because the docs tell you to treat GET /v1/catalog as the source of truth.