Pinterest wants 6 to 15 seconds: three trims from a 47-second demo

Pinterest's product specs page (read 2026-10-09) lists standard width video ads at 4 seconds minimum and 15 minutes maximum, with 6 to 15 seconds recommended. From a 47-second product demo you can make three candidates inside that range with three video trim jobs: start 0 for 12 seconds, start 18 for 9 seconds, and start 32 for 15 seconds. At $0.02 each the set is $0.06.

A fourth cut would be another $0.02, so the cost of testing hooks is small next to the cost of producing the footage.

The three cuts

Video trim gets one clip, a start and one of end or duration, and defaults to exact precision, a frame-accurate re-encode. The output must be at least 0.2 seconds; all three are well inside Pinterest's 4-second floor.

Picking the starts

Choose cut points where the picture changes and the voice finishes a phrase. Video inspect gives eight mid-bin stills over the 47 seconds, one every 5.875 seconds, to find those points; you can also name your own times with frames.at, up to 24 per call. If the demo has speech, an inspect with transcribe true adds word timings for $0.01 per audio minute so you can start cuts on a sentence boundary.

Cut C ends at the source end. If you ask for an end past it, the end clamps and the result carries trim_clamped_to_source, so a 46.8-second source does not error.

After the cuts

Each result is a new media.sume.com video with its own artifact id; the source stays. Pinterest's page lists H.264 or H.265 encoding and MP4, MOV or M4V files up to 2 GB. A 15-second clip is far under that, and exact trim writes H.264 in an MP4, which is on the list.

Aspect matters too. The page tells advertisers to avoid ratios shorter than 1:2 and taller than 1.91:1 (width to height); 9:16 sits inside that. If your demo is landscape, add a crop with video filter or a Timeline fit before you upload.

Why three and not one

Short product videos are tested against each other, and the first seconds decide it. The three cuts above open on different material: the first 12 seconds of the demo, a feature at 18 seconds, and the finish at 32 seconds. Pinterest's page is a spec sheet, not a performance claim, so which cut wins is for your own results to say.

Because each trim is $0.02 and returns in one job, you can rerun with new starts after you see the numbers. Nothing in the source is changed, and the original 47-second file stays available.