YouTube Shorts' free Veo 3 Fast clip is 480p: what Sume models render

YouTube's in-app Veo 3 Fast generates clips for Shorts at 480p with sound, free, according to YouTube's own September 2025 blog post. YouTube's Shorts help says you can upload Shorts at a maximum resolution of 1080p (YouTube Help), so a 480p clip is low resolution for a full-screen phone. If you need sharper footage, Sume's video router lists models at 720p and 1080p, and one at 4K, but each has its own duration and ratio limits. The list below is what the docs say, not a quality ranking.

What YouTube said

Unpacking the magic of our new creative tools, read 2026-10-04, announces Veo 3 Fast in Shorts: generation from a text prompt, now with sound, at 480p with lower latency, free, rolling out in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The post also says YouTube applies SynthID watermarks and content labels across these features. It is a 2025 announcement; the current help page, Create content for Shorts using AI-generated features, describes the standalone clip tool as producing videos up to 10 seconds without naming a resolution, so confirm what the app gives you today.

What the Sume docs list

The Video Router page gives per-model ranges. Prices are not repeated here because they change; read them from GET /v1/catalog.

Picking for a Short

For a hook clip of a few seconds, the Auto defaults are enough to test a concept. For a final render that will be stretched to a phone screen, choose a model with a 1080p option and set aspect_ratio to 9:16. Gemini Omni Flash 1.1 always carries synced audio; for other models, plan audio separately and join it in Timeline 1.0, which renders 1080x1920 by default and charges $0.10 per ceil output minute.

One honest limit: resolution is not the same as quality. A 1080p tag tells you the pixel grid, not whether faces or text hold up. Generate a short test, pull a still with video frames, and look at it before you queue a batch. The jobs and results page covers polling for each clip.