Pinterest video ad 4-second minimum: trim allows 0.2, so check

Pinterest video ads must be at least 4 seconds long, and Sume's video trim will happily make a 3-second cut, because its output floor is 0.2 seconds. The mismatch is yours to catch: read duration_seconds on the trim result and refuse anything under 4 before you upload. The other end lines up: trim's 900-second output ceiling is exactly Pinterest's 15-minute maximum.

The two ranges

Pinterest's ad specification page (read 2026-10-08) gives video length as a minimum of 4 seconds and a maximum of 15 minutes, with 6 to 15 seconds recommended for ads. File types are MP4, MOV or M4V, encoding is H.264 or H.265, and the size cap is 2 GB.

Guarding the floor

A trim request names start and one of end or duration. The refusals cover an empty range (video_trim_range_empty) and a conflict, not a short one, so a request for start: 10, end: 13 succeeds with 3 seconds. Add the check to your own code: after GET /v1/jobs/:id/result returns kind: video_trim, compare duration_seconds with 4.

Watch the clamp as well. If you ask for an end beyond the source, Sume clamps it and adds trim_clamped_to_source to warnings[], so a 3-second request at the tail of a 10-second clip can return less than you asked for. Reading the result field catches both cases.

{
  "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/product.mp4",
  "start": 2,
  "duration": 6,
  "precision": "exact"
}

Choosing the length

Pinterest recommends 6 to 15 seconds, so the sensible cut is a short one that clears the floor with margin. Six seconds leaves two seconds of slack over the minimum, which absorbs a frame-accurate result that comes back a little short. For a longer Collections-style piece, up to 900 seconds is allowed by both sides, and a trim source can be 1,800 seconds.

Each trim costs $0.02 at the public rate, so cutting two variants, six and fifteen seconds, from one master is four cents.

What this does not cover

Aspect ratio rules for standard and max-width ads differ, and the page lists them separately. The related posts cover those. Sume does not upload to Pinterest.

A simple guard in code

The check is one comparison. After the job finishes, read the result, take duration_seconds, and refuse the file if it is under 4. If it is under 4, rerun the trim with a longer duration, or pick an earlier start so the source has enough footage after it.

Because exact mode re-encodes, a result can differ slightly from the request, so do not cut right at the floor. Ask for 4.5 or more if you are cutting near the minimum, and leave the 6 to 15 second range for the cut you actually plan to run.