Instagram Reels template: music plus 3 clips, how to build the cut

Instagram says templates are "only available for reels that include music and at least 3 clips", so a Reel built from one continuous take, or with no music, cannot become a template. You can build a cut that meets both conditions with Sume Timeline 1.0: one audio spine and three or more video slots rendered to a 1080x1920 MP4. Whether a given Reel then shows up as a template is Instagram's call, and Sume cannot publish templates.

The condition comes from Instagram's Reels page, read on 2026-10-02; the same page says a template lets others reuse the music and timing while swapping in their own media. The tool facts are from Timeline 1.0, video trim and Media inputs.

What does a template-ready Reel need?

Two conditions are on the page. Everything else in the table is a practical consequence of them, marked as such.

How do I build a 3-clip cut in Timeline?

Import the three clips and the track first, because Timeline reads only this workspace's media.sume.com files. Then send one render request. video[0].start must be 0, later starts must increase, and audio.duration_seconds is the output length. Transitions are allowed on slots after the first, with fade capped at one second.

The sample below makes a 9-second Reel from three 3-second slots over a 9-second track. Replace the URLs with your own imported files. Run POST /v1/timeline-1.0/plan first if you want the cost and segment count without a job: it is unbilled.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/timeline-1.0/render \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: reel-template-cut-001" \
  -d '{"audio":{"url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/track.wav",
        "duration_seconds":9},
       "video":[
         {"source_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/a.mp4","start":0,"duration":3},
         {"source_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/b.mp4","start":3,"duration":3,
          "transition":{"type":"fade","duration":0.25}},
         {"source_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/c.mp4","start":6,"duration":3}]}'

What does it cost and how long can it be?

The docs price Timeline at $0.10 per output minute, rounded up, so a 9-second Reel is $0.10. The audio spine can be up to 1800 seconds and a render takes 1 to 200 video slots. Cutting each source to the part you want first costs $0.02 per video trim job, though a source_in on the slot does the same without a separate job.

Instagram's own guide says Reels run 3 seconds to 3 minutes and that its guide's "sweet spot" for tutorials is 15 to 60 seconds; a 3-clip template is easy to fit in that.

What does Sume not do here?

It does not create an Instagram template, choose licensed trending audio, or know whether a Reel qualifies. Music licensing is yours: use a track you own or have cleared, since the Reels page notes that licensed audio must be attributed or linked to the artist with the track name.

If you want a first draft of the cuts rather than hand-placing them, the pause-trimming flow in the First Draft post shows how to get the clip ranges.

How do I keep the cuts reusable?

A template is about timing, so make the clip boundaries easy to see. Keep each slot at a similar length, cut on a beat of the track, and avoid burning text that only fits your footage. Text baked into pixels travels with the clip, so another creator swapping in their own media gets your words on their video only if the template carries them, and Sume cannot control that.

Test the cut before you spend an upload. Render it, then probe it for duration_seconds and has_audio, and read stills at each cut time with frames: { at: [...] } to confirm the three clips actually appear as three. Timeline treats declared starts as authoritative and compensates for transitions itself, so the cut points you set are the ones to line up with the beat.