Guide · 5 minute read
How to Turn a Long Video into Shorts
A one-hour video holds a dozen moments that stand on their own. Cut out and framed for the phone, each is a short that points back to the long video. Here is what makes a clip work, and how to get them without scrubbing through the hour yourself.
1. A clip is a whole thought
The moments that work as shorts are complete without the rest: a question and its answer, a claim and its proof, a story with its ending. A clip that needs "as I said earlier" does not travel.
2. Start on the hook
The first second decides whether the short is watched. Begin at the line that makes someone stop - the surprising claim, the question - not at the breath before it. Then put that line on screen as text for the first few seconds, where it covers no face.
3. Cut on a word
A clip that begins or ends mid-word feels broken. Begin and end in the silence around a word, with a little room either side.
4. Frame it for the phone
A wide picture has to become a tall one. With one speaker, follow the face - with a camera that holds still until it has to move. With two people in one shot, stack them one above the other. With anything else, show the whole picture on a blurred copy of itself.
5. Add captions
Most shorts are watched with the sound off at first. Show the words a few at a time, with the word being spoken lit.
Doing it with the Clipping tool
The Clipping tool in VidGenius does all five. Paste a YouTube link or upload your file (45 seconds to 3 hours, up to 2 GB). It watches the video, chooses the moments, cuts each on the edge of a word, frames it tall on whoever is speaking, and captions it - in 9:16, 1:1 or 16:9. You choose how many clips you want and how long they should be, or let it decide.
One rule
Clip your own videos, or videos you have the right to use. The tool asks you to confirm that before it starts.
