guides
How Long Should a Short Video Be? A Practical Guide
By Devon Park · 2025-05-24
TL;DR
Around 20-35 seconds is a common sweet spot for short-form. Test in your own niche — retention is what actually matters to the algorithm.
Short-form ranking is dominated by retention, not raw length.
Videos that loop tend to retain better than those that fade out.
ReelMint defaults to 5 scenes at roughly 4-6 seconds each = ~25 seconds total.
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