A 3-minute Short from 12 Wan 3.0 clips of 15 s: $22.86 with Timeline

A full 3-minute Short built from twelve 15-second Wan 3.0 clips at 720p costs $22.86 on Sume: 12 x $1.88 = $22.56 for the clips and 3 x $0.10 = $0.30 for the Timeline render. YouTube's Shorts page allows up to three minutes in a square or vertical frame.

The arithmetic

Billable prices, read from the catalog. Timeline 1.0 is $0.10 per started output minute.

Check your own multiple

The check below repeats the sum in cents so there is no float drift.

import math

def short_cost_cents(clip_cents, clips, seconds_each):
    total_s = clips * seconds_each
    if total_s > 180:
        raise ValueError("over the 3-minute Short limit")
    minutes = math.ceil(total_s / 60)
    return clips * clip_cents + minutes * 10

print(short_cost_cents(188, 12, 15))
print(short_cost_cents(284, 12, 15))

What this leaves out

The plan has no retries and no audio. A music bed from Music 1.0 is a fixed $0.125 per generation. A clip that fails and is redone adds its price again, so budget a few extra clips. If a 15-second clip is more than you need, Wan 3.0 starts at 2 seconds, and 8 seconds at 720p is $1.00.

The Wan 3.0 price is linear in seconds, so 180 seconds in any split costs the same clip total: 180 x 12.5 cents is $22.50 before per-clip rounding.

Cutting the bill

Shorter clips cost proportionally less on Wan 3.0: 12 clips of 8 seconds are 12 x $1.00 = $12.00, plus $0.20 for the 96-second Timeline render (2 minutes), a total of $12.20 for a Short of about a minute and a half. Wan 3.0 starts at 2 seconds, and a 2-second clip at 720p is $0.25.

A 480p draft pass costs half the 720p price on the same model: 15 s at 480p is 94 cents (rounded) against 188 at 720p. Draft at 480p, and re-render only the clips you keep.

Per-minute view

The 22.86 total works out to 22.86 / 3 = $7.62 per minute of finished Short at 720p on Wan 3.0, and 34.38 / 3 = $11.46 per minute on the Mini row. The Timeline part is 10 cents a minute, which is about 1.3 percent of the Wan total, so the clips are the cost to watch.

If you plan a 6-part series of 3-minute Shorts, six times the Wan total is 6 x 22.86 = $137.16. Neither number includes retries or music.

Where the Timeline limits sit

Twelve video slots and a 180-second audio spine are far inside Timeline 1.0's limits of 200 slots and 1800 seconds. The auto render strategy chunks the render once a timeline passes 12 segments, so 12 segments render as one pass and 13 or more would be chunked. The plan endpoint is unbilled, so check the minutes it reports before you submit: it should say 3.

Format of the finished file

Timeline's default output is 1080x1920, which is vertical and so inside the Shorts rule on aspect. The clips are 720p, so check the result for softness at 1080x1920 before you publish.