gh-jezweb-claude-skills-skills-google-gemini-api/references/multimodal-guide.md

Multimodal Guide

Complete guide to using images, video, audio, and PDFs with Gemini API.

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Supported Formats

Images

• JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, HEIF
• Max size: 20MB

Video

• MP4, MPEG, MOV, AVI, FLV, MPG, WebM, WMV
• Max size: 2GB
• Max length (inline): 2 minutes

Audio

• MP3, WAV, FLAC, AAC, OGG, OPUS
• Max size: 20MB

PDFs

• Max size: 30MB
• Text-based PDFs work best

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Usage Pattern

contents: [
  {
    parts: [
      { text: 'Your question' },
      {
        inlineData: {
          data: base64EncodedData,
          mimeType: 'image/jpeg' // or video/mp4, audio/mp3, application/pdf
        }
      }
    ]
  }
]

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Best Practices

• Use specific, detailed prompts
• Combine multiple modalities in one request
• For large files (>2GB), use File API (Phase 2)

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Official Docs

https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/vision