Repair 12 claim-blocked Shorts in one script: $4.40, or $3.275

YouTube's help page on three-minute Shorts (read 2026-10-08) says a Short longer than one minute with an active copyright claim is blocked worldwide and cannot be monetized. If you have a backlog of such videos, the repair is to replace the claimed music with an original bed. On Sume that is one Music generation at $0.125 plus a Timeline render at $0.10 per started minute.

Twelve Shorts of 62 to 180 seconds cost $4.40 with one new bed each, or $3.275 if three beds are shared across the set. The script below prints both numbers.

The planner

It refuses lengths outside 61 to 180 seconds, because a Short of 60 seconds or less is not affected by this rule and one over 180 seconds is not a Short.

import math

DURATIONS = [62, 75, 90, 118, 121, 150, 160, 175, 180, 66, 70, 95]  # seconds
BED = 0.125            # Music 1.0 / Music Router, per generation
RENDER_PER_MIN = 0.10  # Timeline 1.0, per started output minute

def repair_cost(seconds: int) -> float:
    if not 60 < seconds <= 180:
        raise ValueError(f"{seconds}s is not a claim-blocked Short (61-180 s)")
    return BED + math.ceil(seconds / 60) * RENDER_PER_MIN

total = 0.0
for s in DURATIONS:
    cost = repair_cost(s)
    total += cost
    print(f"{s:>3}s -> {math.ceil(s / 60)} min render, ${cost:.3f}")
print(f"{len(DURATIONS)} Shorts: ${total:.3f}")
shared = BED * 3 + sum(math.ceil(s / 60) * RENDER_PER_MIN for s in DURATIONS)
print(f"with 3 shared beds: ${shared:.3f}")

Reading the output

Lengths of 62 to 120 seconds bill two render minutes ($0.325 each with a fresh bed), and 121 to 180 bill three ($0.425). The twelve lengths in the script give seven at $0.325 and five at $0.425, which is $2.275 + $2.125 = $4.40. With three shared beds, the bed cost falls from $1.50 to $0.375, saving $1.125.

Limits of the claim

The Sume docs do not say a generated bed will pass any rights check, and this post does not claim it. YouTube's page says the blocking applies to an active claim; a new original bed has no claim at the time it is made, but what you publish remains your responsibility. If the claim came from voices or clips and not the music, a new bed will not change the result.

Render each Short with the existing footage and the new bed as soundtrack, using gain_db and duck_db if a voice is present. The claimed audio has to come out of the footage first; detach the audio only to inspect it, not to reuse it.

Order of work for the backlog: sort the Shorts by length first, since the 121 to 180 second group pays $0.10 more per render. If a few of the longest videos can be cut to 120 seconds or less, the same script shows the saving at once: moving one 121-second Short to 120 seconds turns a $0.425 repair into $0.325. Only cut when the story survives it.

Sharing beds is a creative choice as much as a cost one. Three beds across twelve Shorts means each bed is heard four times, so group the videos by mood or series and give each group its own bed. At $0.125 a generation, a bed per group of two or three videos is still cheap; the $1.125 saving is the price of repeating music, not a reason to do it.

Run the planner against your own list of lengths before you generate anything. It raises an error for a length outside the 61 to 180 second range, which catches a typo in the list before it becomes a paid render.