Snapchat Spotlight Post button needs 5 seconds: probe and trim

A video has to be at least 5 seconds long before Snapchat shows the Post button for Spotlight. Snapchat's help page says to create a video Snap that is 5 seconds or longer, and that the Post button appears when you are 16 or older, you are in a region where Spotlight posting is enabled, and your video is 5 seconds or longer. Sume can tell you the exact duration of a clip with video inspect, and it can cut a clip down, but trim cannot make a short clip longer.

Think of the rule as a pre-flight gate. A gate that runs in a script costs a probe per clip, and it catches a clip that would silently not qualify before you spend time exporting it to a phone.

What the Snapchat page says

The page lists three conditions for the button, and only one of them is about the file. Age and region are properties of the account, so a pipeline can only check the duration.

Check the duration first

Run video inspect with frames set to false and read duration_seconds from the probe. If the value is under 5, the clip will not qualify. The inspect default mode is sync and waits up to 30 seconds for a 200 response, and the job returns 202 if it takes longer, so handle both.

Be careful with a clip that is close to the line. A clip of 5.0 seconds on paper may probe as 4.97. The helper below uses a margin so a near miss is treated as a failure. The margin is a choice, and Snapchat's page does not define one.

Vertical orientation is the other file property people check for Spotlight. The page text we read does not state it in the help article, so this post does not make it a rule. If vertical output matters to you, check the Spotlight Guidelines that the page links to.

MIN_SECONDS = 5.0
MARGIN = 0.1

def spotlight_ok(probe):
    secs = probe.get("duration_seconds")
    if secs is None:
        return False, "no duration in probe"
    if secs < MIN_SECONDS + MARGIN:
        return False, "too short: %.2f s" % secs
    return True, "%.2f s" % secs

print(spotlight_ok({"duration_seconds": 4.97}))
print(spotlight_ok({"duration_seconds": 12.4}))

Trim can push a clip under the line

The dead lead-in is a common reason a clip fails. A generated clip may start with a still second, and a screen recording may start with a cursor moving to a button. Cutting the lead-in makes a clip shorter, so a clip that was 5.5 seconds can drop to 4.5 and lose the button. Probe after every trim and not only before it.

Sume trim accepts a duration from 0.2 to 900 seconds, so it has no problem producing a very short clip. That is the reason to check against the platform and not against the tool.

A worked example. A 7.2-second clip has a 1.4-second still lead-in. Cutting from 1.4 gives 5.8 seconds, which is still above the line. If the lead-in were 2.6 seconds, the cut would be 4.6 seconds, which is below it. In both cases the probe on the trimmed result gives the answer, and the helper above flags the second case.

If the clip is too short

If a clip is too short, the fix is to make or choose a longer clip. Sume Timeline 1.0 can lay clips on an audio spine, and its docs list padded or looped short sources as soft warnings and not failures, but this post does not rely on that behavior for a rule. The safer plan is to ask the video model for a longer generation, or join two clips on a timeline, and then probe the result.

What this does not cover

Snapchat has other requirements outside this check. The page refers to Spotlight Guidelines, the Terms of Service and the Spotlight Terms, none of which this post reads. Treat the 5-second rule as a technical gate and not as approval to publish.