YouTube "Edit into a Short": 60 seconds, public videos only

YouTube's "Edit into a Short" lets you pick up to 60 seconds from one of your own public videos and turn it into a Short that links back to the original. It works only on videos that are public, original, opted in to sampling, and free of third-party copyright claims, and you cannot add music from the Audio Library.

Everything below comes from YouTube's help page for creating Shorts from your own videos, which I read on 2026-10-02. Sume does not run this flow; Sume works on files. Where the two overlap is covered at the end.

How do I turn my own video into a Short on YouTube?

The help page gives five steps. Open the watch page of your video, choose Remix, then Edit into a Short, select your footage, add elements such as text or filters, and upload the Short.

• Open the watch page of the video you uploaded.
• Select Remix, then Edit into a Short.
• Choose up to 60 seconds of footage.
• Add creative elements like text or filters.
• Upload your Short.

Which videos qualify, and what is the 60-second limit?

The page lists four conditions. A video that fails any one of them will not offer the option.

The 60 seconds is a selection limit on the source footage. The page adds that if you use less than the full 60 seconds you can record extra segments with the Shorts camera. That is a different ceiling from the three-minute Shorts length: the page for this flow says 60 seconds of your video, while the Shorts camera help page says Shorts can be up to three minutes.

Does the new Short link back to the original?

Yes. The page says Shorts created from your videos are linked back to your original video, giving new viewers a chance to discover your content. It also says only you can edit your long-form video into a Short this way; other creators cannot, though general remixing is a separate feature.

That link is part of the in-app flow. A clip you cut elsewhere and upload as a new Short is a new upload, and the page I read does not say it gets the same link.

When would I cut the 60 seconds with Sume instead?

Use the in-app flow when you want the link-back and the built-in text and filters. Use a file route when you need something the flow does not offer: captions burned into the pixels, a cut that is longer than 60 seconds, or a batch of cuts made by script.

Video trim takes one workspace clip plus a start and either an end or a duration, and returns a new MP4. The output can be 0.2 to 900 seconds and the source up to 1800 seconds, so a 60-second cut is well inside the range. The default exact precision is a frame-accurate re-encode. The public rate in the docs is $0.02 per job.

The source must already be a media.sume.com clip, so import it first with POST /v1/media-imports. A 60-second cut looks like this:

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-trim \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: edit-into-short-001" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/talk.mp4",
    "start": 125,
    "duration": 60,
    "mode": "sync"
  }'

What does Sume not do here?

Sume does not read your YouTube account, does not click Remix for you, and does not set the sampling opt-in. Those live in YouTube Studio. If you want burned-in captions on the cut, Video captions takes the trimmed MP4 as video_url. For the sizing rules on the finished file, see YouTube Shorts video specs.

One caution: YouTube changed how it treats reposted clips this month. Whether a cut from your own long video counts as original is covered in Clip your own long video into Shorts.

What should I check before I start?

Open YouTube Studio and confirm the sampling setting is on for the video, since the option does not appear without it. Then check that the video has no third-party copyright claim; a claim on the video, even on a few seconds of it, is a listed blocker.

Decide where the 60 seconds will come from. The flow takes one selection of footage, so if the best moment is split across two places in the video, plan to record the missing part with the Shorts camera or cut the pieces outside YouTube. In a file route you can place both pieces in order with Timeline 1.0, which accepts up to 200 video[] slots.