Appcues can't host video: trim a 20-second onboarding clip

Appcues does not accept video uploads: the video must sit on a service such as YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia, and you paste its iframe embed code. So the workflow is cut the clip, host it, then embed. Sume's video trim does the first step.

Appcues facts are from Embed a Video in a Flow, read 2026-10-03.

What does Appcues require?

The help page sets these terms:

• Videos are hosted on a service like YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia; you cannot upload files directly.
• Add a Video or HTML component and paste the iframe embed code.
• A script-heavy embed can conflict with the Flow container; Appcues suggests a minimal iframe instead.
• Match the iframe width and height to your modal or slideout.
• A Content Security Policy frame-src rule can block the video host unless you allow it.

How do I cut the clip?

Trim a long screen recording to the step that matters. Video trim takes start plus one of end or duration and costs $0.02 per job. Use precision: "exact" for a clean first frame, or keyframe for speed.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-trim \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: appcues-clip-001" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/setup-recording.mp4",
    "start": 41,
    "duration": 20,
    "audio": "drop"
  }'

Should the clip have captions?

An in-app clip often plays in a quiet office. Video captions can burn in your own segments, which skips transcription, and a silent clip fails as caption_no_speech, so supply the text yourself for a screen recording with no voice. It is $0.20 for a clip up to 60 seconds.

What does Sume not do?

Sume gives you a durable MP4 URL on its media domain, not an embeddable player page, and does not publish to Appcues or any video host. Read the file from GET /v1/jobs/:id/result (Jobs and results), then upload it to your video host.