Eight 170-second Short episodes in Timeline: 3 minutes each, $2.40

Eight 170-second episodes cost $2.40 to render on Sume. Timeline bills $0.10 per started output minute, 170 seconds is ceil(170 / 60) = 3 minutes, so each episode is $0.30 and 8 x $0.30 = $2.40 (as of 2026-10-08). YouTube's help page says Shorts uploaded after October 15, 2024 can be up to 3 minutes, so 170 seconds leaves 10 seconds of room.

The length is the whole bill

Because billing rounds up to the minute, every length from 121 to 180 seconds costs the same $0.30. A 121-second episode and a 180-second episode are priced alike, so if the story needs the time, use it. The line that matters is 181 seconds: that is 4 minutes, $0.40, and it is past the Shorts limit as well.

Claims are the other half

The same YouTube page says a Short over one minute that has an active copyright claim is blocked globally and cannot be monetized, while the channel gets no penalty for it. So a 170-second episode with a licensed song is a bigger risk than a 59-second one. The page says the Audio Library's royalty-free music does not receive a Content ID claim. Use that, or music you hold rights to, in the long episodes.

If a claim hits anyway, the cheap repair on Sume is a Video trim to under a minute at $0.02, or a re-score and a re-render of the episode at $0.30. The trim keeps one minute of the 170 seconds, so you lose most of the episode.

Run the plan first

The Timeline plan call is unbilled. For each of the eight bodies it returns billable_minutes, which should read 3. If one episode comes back as 4, a slot sum has drifted past 180 seconds and you have caught it for free. Set audio.duration_seconds explicitly to 170 in each body, keep the sum of video slot durations within 0.5 seconds of it, and submit each render with its own Idempotency-Key such as ep-01 through ep-08.

The render maximum is 30 minutes and 1 to 200 slots, so 170 seconds is far from any hard limit. Only the 3-minute Short cap and the minute rounding apply.

A season budget

A season of 8 episodes at 170 seconds is $2.40 to render. Add one standalone caption per episode and the cost is not the same, because the caption price in the docs is stated for clips of 60 seconds or less, so read the live catalog for longer clips before you plan on $0.20. If you also cut a 59-second teaser from each episode with Video trim, that is 8 x $0.02 = $0.16 extra, and the teaser stays under the one-minute line. The season then comes to $2.56 in render and trim jobs, before any generation of footage, voice or music.