Rough-cut an imported Reel: the $0.15 import is the biggest line

The first line item in a rough cut of a Reel you did not make in Sume is the $0.15 POST /v1/media-imports job, because every media tool takes media.sume.com artifacts only. A rough cut with STT and six trims plus a Timeline render costs $0.38, of which the import is 39.5%, and the Timeline-only route costs $0.27 with the import at 55.6%.

Two routes, line by line

Assumption: a 40-second Reel with 6 kept ranges, so one STT minute and one render minute.

Import once, reuse the artifact

Import (a public TikTok or Instagram video URL) mirrors the video to media.sume.com. Every later job, including a second cut at a different pause threshold, reuses it with no new import, so keep the artifact URL rather than the original link.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/media-imports \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: import-reel-001" \
  -d '{"url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/EXAMPLE/"}' 

Limits

• Media import takes a public TikTok or Instagram video URL; YouTube and other hosts are rejected with unsupported_platform. Files you already hold must be on media.sume.com before the tools can read them.
• Trim sources are limited to 1800 s and filter and frames sources to 300 s, so an imported hour-long recording must be split first.
• Instagram's First Draft needs none of this inside the app (read 2026-10-09); the import line only exists when you work through the API.