Cut a 10-minute video into Shorts: YouTube's 60 s vs Sume trim

If you only need a few cuts from a video you published on YouTube, the platform's own tool is free. If the source lives outside YouTube, or you want an MP4 you can caption and reuse, Sume video trim cuts a range for $0.02 a job. The two have different limits, so pick by where the source is.

What YouTube's tool allows

YouTube's Edit into a Short flow lets you pick up to 60 seconds of one of your own videos. Private and unlisted videos and videos with third-party copyright claims cannot be used, and you cannot add music from the Audio Library to a Short made this way.

What Sume trim allows

Trim takes one clip already on media.sume.com and returns a new MP4 for the half-open range [start, end). The source is untouched. Limits from the docs: source up to 1800 seconds, output up to 900 seconds, output at least 0.2 seconds. Import the file first with POST /v1/media-imports; trim does not fetch the open internet.

• Public rate: $0.02 per job.
• You choose start and end. Trim does not find highlights for you.
• Send exactly one of end or duration, plus an Idempotency-Key.

Ten minutes to three vertical clips: the cost

Say a 10-minute talk becomes three 45-second clips, each captioned. That is three trims at $0.02 and three caption jobs at $0.20 (the fixed estimate covers videos up to 60 seconds, per the captions docs). Total: $0.06 + $0.60 = $0.66 before any reframing.

One trim call

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-trim \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: talk-clip-1" \
  -d '{"video_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/talk.mp4","start":120,"duration":45}'

Poll GET /v1/jobs/{id}/status, then read video_url from the result. That MP4 is the input to a caption job.