Zillow Showcase video: 120 seconds, no persistent logos

A Zillow Showcase listing video can run at most 120 seconds and cannot carry persistent agent or brokerage logos, watermarks or advertising. If you have a longer tour or a branded cut, Sume video trim can produce a 120-second-or-shorter, logo-free MP4 from it for $0.02 a job.

One thing to settle first: Zillow's page says the photographer uploads Showcase video through Aryeo, and agents then pick from the videos already uploaded. So for the Showcase carousel itself, the file has to reach Zillow through your photographer's workflow. Sume's docs describe no connector to Zillow or Aryeo, so Sume is where you make the cut, and the upload is a separate step you or your provider performs.

Rules below come from Zillow's Showcase Getting Started Guide: Editing listings, read 2026-10-03. Sume's side comes from Video trim and Timeline 1.0.

What does Zillow's Showcase page say about video?

The page states four things that matter for a cut:

• Maximum length is 120 seconds.
• Videos cannot include persistent agent or brokerage logos, watermarks or advertising. Personal branding such as introducing yourself is permitted.
• Videos must be relevant to the listing and focused primarily on the listing, or they may be flagged and removed.
• Only the media provider uploads videos, through Aryeo, as files rather than links. Agents select from the uploaded videos in the Showcase editor.

How do I cut a long tour down to 120 seconds?

Video trim takes one clip already hosted on media.sume.com and a range, and returns a new MP4 holding only that range. Send start plus exactly one of end or duration. duration accepts 0.2 to 900 seconds, so 120 is well inside the range. The source file is untouched.

Trim requires an Idempotency-Key. Import the clip first with POST /v1/media-imports; the endpoint does not fetch arbitrary URLs. Source clips can be up to 1800 seconds. The request below keeps 118 seconds starting at the 14-second mark, which leaves two seconds under the cap.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-trim \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: zillow-cut-001" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/full-tour.mp4",
    "start": 14,
    "duration": 118
  }'

Which trim settings matter for a listing cut?

Four behaviours change the result. Check them before you hand the file to your photographer.

How do I keep logos out of the Showcase cut?

Keep two files. The branded version is for your own channels; the Showcase version never gets the plate. If you add a logo or price plate with timeline compose overlay mode, render that as a separate job from the clean clip, so the clean MP4 stays untouched.

Sume's burned-in captions draw words, not logos. Zillow's page does not mention captions either way, so treat a caption style as your own judgment call and read the page before you add one. Rotating cue text is different from a persistent mark, but the decision is Zillow's, not Sume's.

What does Sume not do here?

Sume does not upload to Zillow, does not check a video against Zillow's rules, and cannot make a video count as the photographer's work. It cuts the file. Poll the job with GET /v1/jobs/:id/status and read GET /v1/jobs/:id/result, which returns video_url, duration_seconds and actual_start_seconds; the details are on Jobs and results.

Confirm the finished duration in the result before you send the file on. A 120-second limit is not a target; a few seconds under leaves room for a re-encode on the other side. If your tour is a set of room clips rather than one long take, assemble them first with Timeline 1.0, then trim the render if it runs over.