YouTube takes 256 GB uploads, but Sume media tools stop at 30 minutes

YouTube's videos.insert accepts files up to 256 GB, so the upload will not be your bottleneck. Sume's video trim and video inspect are: both read a source of at most 1,800 seconds, 30 minutes, so a two-hour recording has to be split before Sume can cut a Short from it.

YouTube's numbers come from the videos.insert reference, read on 2026-10-02. Sume's caps come from the docs pages linked above, which cite the API contract.

What are the two sets of limits?

The insert reference lists a maximum file size of 256 GB and accepted MIME types video/* and application/octet-stream. It does not list a maximum duration on that page, so we do not state one.

Sume's limits are about duration, not bytes. Video trim takes a source up to 1800 seconds and produces a cut of 0.2 to 900 seconds. Video inspect also caps the source at 1800 seconds and returns at most 24 stills per call.

What happens if my source is longer than 1,800 seconds?

The video trim docs list source_duration_exceeded for a source longer than 1800 seconds, raised by the worker. The video must also already be on media.sume.com; off-site URLs are rejected with unsupported_media_source, and a dead or foreign URL gives source_not_found.

Sume's docs do not describe a split-by-chapter tool for a long file, so split the recording before you import it, with whatever editor you use, into pieces under 30 minutes. Then cut the Shorts from the pieces.

How do I cut a Short from one of the pieces?

Pass the piece's media.sume.com URL, a start and a duration. The call below cuts 40 seconds starting at 9 minutes and conforms the output to a vertical 1080 by 1920 at 30 fps, which is the exact precision path, a frame-accurate re-encode.

output is allowed only with precision: exact; pairing it with keyframe returns video_trim_output_requires_exact.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-trim \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: piece-2-short-1" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/piece2.mp4",
    "start": 540,
    "duration": 40,
    "output": { "width": 1080, "height": 1920, "fps": 30 }
  }'

Does this make Sume the wrong tool for long recordings?

For turning a long recording into Shorts, Sume is the second step, not the first. It is built for short material and clips: you prepare a piece, cut, caption and assemble. If your source is a three-hour stream, the split is yours.

The result of a trim arrives as a job; follow the polling rules in Jobs and results and keep the same Idempotency-Key on any retry of a failed submit, so you do not pay for the same cut twice.

Which limit do I hit first for a Short?

Neither, for a Short. YouTube Shorts are short by definition and a vertical 1080 by 1920 file of a few minutes is far below 256 GB. The practical limit is the one you plan around: a source under 1800 seconds for Sume, and a final cut of at most 900 seconds out of a trim.

The 256 GB figure matters for the opposite case, uploading a long master recording. There, the Sume caps do not apply because you are not sending the file through Sume at all.

One more detail: a trim result is a new MP4 artifact on media.sume.com and the source is never changed. That means you can cut several Shorts from the same piece without re-importing it, and you can delete nothing and still keep your original recording intact on your own disk. Only the output of each trim, up to 900 seconds, is something you upload.