Estate sale preview video from mixed portrait and landscape photos

For an estate sale preview video built from phone photos in mixed orientations, use fit: "blur" on each Timeline slot: every lot is shown whole, centred over a blurred, cropped copy of itself. cover, the default, crops the edges of a lot to fill the frame; contain keeps the whole photo but leaves plain bars; stretch distorts the item to fit.

Buyers decide from the details, so the item must not be cropped or squashed. The options come from the Timeline 1.0 page, read 2026-10-04.

The four fit values

Each video[] slot carries its own fit, so one render can handle a portrait armchair, a landscape dining set and a square close-up of a clock.

Pick the output once

An output size is set once in output.width and output.height, even integers from 256 to 2160. The default is 1080 by 1920. Pick 1920 by 1080 for a listing page or a screen at the sale, and keep 1080 by 1920 for a Reel.

Cost and plan

Ten lots at 3 seconds each is a 30-second spine, which bills as one minute: $0.10 at the published Timeline rate. Add a plate with each lot number and price using Timeline compose in overlay mode, one $0.02 job per plate, and drop the resulting MP4 into video[] as the lot's slot, as the Timeline page describes.

Run POST /v1/timeline-1.0/plan before you render. It reports billable_minutes and estimated_cost_usd_micros without creating a job.

{
  "audio": { "mode": "silence", "duration_seconds": 30 },
  "video": [
    { "source_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/lot-01-portrait.jpg", "start": 0, "duration": 3, "fit": "blur" },
    { "source_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/lot-02-landscape.jpg", "start": 3, "duration": 3, "fit": "blur",
      "transition": { "type": "fade", "duration": 0.5 } }
  ],
  "output": { "width": 1920, "height": 1080, "fps": 30 }
}

Before you send it

The sample above is truncated to two slots to show the shape; send all ten, with start rising by 3 each time and the spine at 30 seconds. Slot coverage may trail the spine by at most 0.5 seconds, so the last slot must reach the end.

Disclose condition honestly in the caption. A blurred background hides nothing about the item, but a crop can hide a chip or a stain.