Trailer Reel for your Instagram Series: 15 seconds from 3 episodes

Take one 5-second beat from each of the first three episodes with video trim, join them in a Timeline 1.0 render with a fade of a quarter second, and burn one title line. Total: three trims at $0.02, one timeline at $0.10 and one caption job at $0.20, or $0.36.

Meta's Series test gives each series its own page on a creator's profile and lets viewers move through episodes in order (TechCrunch, read 2026-10-07). A trailer is the Reel that sends someone to that page.

Cost

Steps

Import each episode with POST /v1/media-imports. Pick the beat in each: the line that sets up the question, not the answer. Trim it with start and duration: 5.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-trim \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: trailer-ep1" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/ep1.mp4",
    "start": 12,
    "duration": 5
  }'

The join

Timeline 1.0 needs an audio spine with audio.duration_seconds, here 15. If you want the beats' own sound, detach it once with audio detach and use it as the spine, or add a music bed. Each video[] slot sets start on the spine (the first must be 0), duration, and for later slots a transition such as fade of at most 1 second. A quarter second is plenty.

Run POST /v1/timeline-1.0/plan first to see the duration and billable minutes without paying, then POST /v1/timeline-1.0/render. The default output is 1080 by 1920, which suits a Reel.

The title line

Burn one line over the first two seconds with cues in video captions: text, start, end in seconds. Keep it to the show name and the one-line hook. Do not put a URL in the picture; a link in a frame is not clickable.

Post the trailer when episode three is up, so a viewer who taps through finds something to watch. Group it with your Series if Instagram's tools let you; the reports describe the test as limited to select creators.

Choosing the beats

Pick beats that raise a question, not ones that answer it. A trailer works by leaving something open. If episode two ends on a door opening, the beat is the second before the door opens, not the room behind it. Three beats, each ending on a question, make a 15-second Reel that people want to finish.

Keep it in the same look

A trailer should look like the show. Reuse the caption style you use on the episodes, and the same music bed if you have one. If the sound differs, a viewer who taps through will feel a mismatch before they know why.