TopView says 15 seconds, reservation says 9-15: trim both for $0.04

Cut two files from one master: 9 seconds for reservation in-feed and 15 seconds for TopView. Both TikTok pages allow 5-60 seconds, but the TopView page recommends 15 seconds in one line and 9-15 in another, and the reservation page recommends 9-15 (read 2026-10-07). Two Sume video-trim jobs at $0.02 each cost $0.04.

The recommendations are guidance, not rules; the hard window is 5-60 s. I would still ship the shorter cut where the page says 9-15 and keep the 15-second cut as the TopView default.

What each page says

Both come from TikTok's ad help: TopView and reservation in-feed.

Two trims from the same master

Video trim takes a media.sume.com clip, a start in seconds, and exactly one of end or duration (0.2-900 s). The default precision is exact, a frame-accurate re-encode with libx264 and yuv420p, and audio defaults to keep. The source is never changed, and each result is a new artifact.

Give each job its own Idempotency-Key so a retry does not buy a second cut. The script below prints the two request bodies.

import json

master = "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/master.mp4"
for name, seconds in (("reservation-9s", 9), ("topview-15s", 15)):
    body = {"video_url": master, "start": 0, "duration": seconds}
    print("Idempotency-Key:", name)
    print(json.dumps(body))

Where the cut should land

A hard trim at second 9 will cut a sentence in half. If the master has speech, run video inspect with transcribe: true and segmentation: {"mode": "sentence"}, then pick the last sentence end at or before your target. STT is $0.01 per audio minute in the docs; confirm in GET /v1/catalog.

Also keep the hook in the first seconds; neither TikTok page says where the viewer decides, so that is craft, not spec.

After the cut

Probe both outputs: duration_seconds should sit inside 5-60 s, and the whole-file average (size_bytes times 8 over seconds) should clear 2,500 kbps. A short cut of a low-motion master can fall under the floor even when the long cut passed, so check each file, not the master.

Is trimming the right tool?

A trim only removes time. If the 15-second cut loses the hook because the master opens slowly, trimming from start: 0 will not rescue it; set start to the first strong beat, or build a new cut in Timeline 1.0 from selected shots.

Use precision: exact for ads. The keyframe mode is a stream copy that can begin up to a GOP early, which means a few extra frames of the previous shot at the front of a 9-second ad, a visible share of the whole.