YouTube Shorts max out at 1080p: what resolution to request on Sume

YouTube's Shorts help page says you can upload Shorts with a maximum resolution of 1080p. So the resolution to send in a Sume video request for a Short is 1080p. Asking for 4K buys nothing the page says Shorts can use, and it can change the price.

Which Sume rows reach 1080p

Most rows stop at or below 1080p anyway. Only one row lists 4K. The table is from the Video Router doc.

Why not just ask for 4K

Two reasons. First, the Shorts page names 1080p as the ceiling, so any pixels above it are not part of what the page says you can upload. Second, resolution is a pricing input. The Video Router doc lists Wan 3.0 at $0.05, $0.10 and $0.20 per second across its three tiers, as a list price before Sume's markup. A fixed tier per step means a higher tier costs more per second for the same story. For a vertical clip that people watch on a phone, 1080p is the sensible stop.

If your Short mixes clips, note that the 4K vertical vs square comparison covers which rows take which ratio at 4K.

A request that fits

Pin the ratio and the tier together so the catalog can validate both. A request with a value the model does not list returns a 400 and no job is created.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/videos \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: short-1080p-001" \
  -d '{"model":"seedance-2.5","prompt":"A hand-held shot of a ceramic mug on a desk, morning light","aspect_ratio":"9:16","resolution":"1080p","duration":8}'

Drafts at a lower tier

A practical pattern is to draft cheap and finish at 1080p. Seedance 2.5, Wan 3.0 and MiniMax H3 Max all list 480p, so a draft at 480p shows you the motion and framing before you commit to the 1080p render. The prompt and the other fields stay the same; only resolution changes.

There is one catch. A different tier is a different generation, not an upscale of the draft. The 480p clip you liked will not be pixel-identical at 1080p, and this doc set says nothing about seeds: no v1 model accepts seed, so you cannot pin the result. Use drafts to judge the idea, not to approve a final frame.

That also means a 1080p ceiling on the platform side is a cap on what you need, not a target you must always reach. A 720p vertical clip is a valid choice for a quick test post. Whether the app shows it as sharply as a 1080p one is something to check on your own upload, since the help page only states the maximum.

What the page does not say

The help page gives the resolution ceiling and says nothing about bitrate, file size or codec. Treat those as unknown until you test an upload.