YouTube Shorts 'Get feedback': hook and pacing, plus Sume inspect

Get feedback is a button in YouTube's Shorts editor on Android that gives you an analysis of your video's hook, pacing, and more. It only lives inside YouTube's app. Sume has no feedback score, but its video inspect route returns stills and an optional word-timed transcript that you can read for the same two questions: how the Short opens and how fast it moves.

The Get feedback line is from Create YouTube Shorts - Android, read on 2026-10-02. The page gives no detail on what the analysis contains beyond "hook, pacing, and more", so this post does not claim more.

What does Get feedback do?

On the Android create page the feature is listed next to Edit with AI and the upload step: tap Get feedback to get an analysis of your video's hook, pacing, and more. YouTube does not publish the method, the scale or whether the result changes how the Short is recommended, so treat it as editing advice rather than a ranking signal.

What can Sume tell you about a hook?

POST /v1/video-inspect reads one clip already on media.sume.com. By default it returns a probe and 8 stills, and with transcribe: true it adds a transcript with words[] and optional sentence segments[]. Probe and stills are unbilled; the transcript is $0.01 per audio minute, and omitting duration_seconds reserves 1 minute.

For a hook, ask for stills at the first seconds with frames: {"at": [0, 1, 2, 3]} and read the transcript to see whether the first sentence arrives in the first three seconds. Default mode is sync and waits up to 30 seconds, so a Short usually comes back in one call.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-inspect \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: hook-check-001" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/short.mp4",
    "frames": {"at": [0, 1, 2, 3], "max_edge": 768},
    "transcribe": true,
    "segmentation": {"mode": "sentence"}
  }'

How do you judge pacing from the output?

With sentence segments you get gapless caption-line shaped segments, so you can count how many sentences land in each 10 seconds and spot a long stretch with none. Whether a given pace is right is your call and depends on the format; Sume reports timing, it does not grade it.

If the clip is silent, transcribe: true fails with inspect_source_has_no_audio. Run a probe-only inspect with frames: false first and read probe.has_audio.

What do you do with a weak opening?

If the opening drags, start later. Video trim cuts a new MP4 from a start and end or duration for $0.02 per job. For several variants, see our three-cut post. Sume is not a substitute for watching your own Short with the sound off.