Twilio MMS 5 MB video limit: shrink a clip with Sume video trim

Twilio's accepted-content page gives an overall 5 MB limit for MMS media (read 2026-10-02). Sume's video trim can make a clip smaller by cutting its length, dropping the audio and conforming to a smaller frame size and a lower frame rate. It does not accept a bitrate or file-size target, so Sume cannot promise a clip under 5 MB; check the finished file's size before you send.

What Twilio says

Twilio lists the video types it accepts and says the overall MMS size limit is 5 MB. For non-image files it points to carrier-specific limits in a separate help article, which I did not read, so confirm your destination carriers there.

The levers video trim gives you

Size follows duration, pixels, frame rate and audio. Video trim exposes each of those without exposing codec settings.

• duration (or end): 0.2 to 900 seconds. A shorter clip is the biggest saving.
• audio: "drop": removes the audio track if the message works silent.
• output { width, height, fps }: width and height from 256 to 2160, fps 24, 25, 30 or 60. Exact precision only.
• The conform is a plain scale plus frame rate, so a different aspect ratio stretches the picture. Keep the source ratio.

Request shape

Import the source into your workspace first, because trim only reads this workspace's media.sume.com URLs. Then send POST /v1/video-trim with an Idempotency-Key. The default mode is async; poll GET /v1/jobs/:id/status, then read /result for the output video_url.

A short message clip might use start: 0, duration: 6, audio: "drop" and output: { width: 480, height: 270, fps: 24 } for a 16:9 source. Those numbers are an example, not a promise about bytes.

Close the loop yourself

Sume's docs reject client codec fields such as crf, so there is no way to ask for a size. After the job finishes, download the result and measure the bytes. If it is still above 5 MB, shorten the duration or pick a smaller output and run again, using a new Idempotency-Key. At $0.02 per trim job in the public docs, a retry is cheap, but confirm the live price in GET /v1/catalog.

Sume does not send MMS. Twilio does the delivery; this step only prepares the file.