Spotify error: audio and video streams are different durations

Spotify for Creators shows "The audio and video streams in your file are different durations" when the audio track and the video track do not start and end together. Its fix is to re-export from your editing software so both tracks start and end at the same time. If you want the picture to begin or end at a different moment than the sound, Spotify says to add a blank screen to the video track so both are the same length. Details are from Spotify's troubleshooting page, read 2026-09-29.

What do Spotify's other video errors mean?

Four nearby messages are easy to confuse with this one. Spotify explains each on the same page.

What does Spotify require of the tracks?

Spotify's video specs ask for one video track and one audio track, with the audio and video tracks the same duration. They also list edit lists (EDL) as unsupported, and they say the presentation timestamp of the first frame should be within 50 ms of time 0. If a file shows one of the timing errors above, those are the fields to look at first.

Can a Sume Timeline render avoid this error?

It can help, but do not treat it as a guarantee. The Timeline 1.0 request has one audio length, audio.duration_seconds, and the OpenAPI schema says the output duration always equals it, so the picture and the sound are cut to one length by design. If a video source is shorter than its slot, the docs list padded or looped short sources as soft warnings, not failures. A silent render uses audio.mode: "silence" with a declared length, which suits a video-only cover.

Spotify's message is about the streams inside the file, and Sume's docs do not publish per-stream durations for the output, so check the file you get.

How do I check the length before I upload?

Run the render through Video inspect 1.0. Its probe reports one duration_seconds, has_audio, fps and size_bytes, and the probe is unbilled. It does not report the audio and video stream durations separately, so a matching number is a good sign but not proof that Spotify will accept the file. If Spotify still rejects it, follow its advice and re-export from your editing software, or add a blank screen so the tracks match.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-inspect \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: spotify-duration-check-001" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/episode.mp4",
    "frames": false
  }'