Is there an AI for turning long videos into shorts?

AI clip maker free: how far the free plans go

Far enough to test, not to run a channel. The per-minute clipper above gives you 60 credits a month, and one credit is one minute of source video, so a single hour-long episode uses up the month. Its free clips export at up to 1080p with a watermark and no editing, and after three days they can no longer be exported. The per-clip tool above has a free trial with no card, and the stream clipper's free plan makes three clips per stream.

The other route is built into the platforms: YouTube Studio's Clips and Shorts tool for videos already on your channel, and TikTok's Smart Split in TikTok Studio on the web. Each posts only to its own platform. Paid plans run about $15 to $29 a month billed monthly, around half that on a yearly plan. On a per-minute plan, trim the processing window to the part worth clipping, because you pay for every minute you feed in, not for the clips you keep.

YouTube Shorts maker: the free one already in YouTube Studio

If the long video is already on your channel, start in YouTube Studio. Open Content, click the video, choose Clips and Shorts, then Create clip or Short. You pick the segment by selecting lines in the transcript, typing timestamps or taking one of the AI suggestions, which YouTube offers in ten countries, including the US, the UK and India, and in seven languages. Captions are added from the transcript where available, and the Short links back to the full video as its related video.

What it does not do is follow the speaker. A horizontal video becomes a vertical Short with a blurred copy of the frame filling the space above and below. The clip makers above crop around the face instead, cut a batch in one pass and, on paid plans, post to TikTok and Instagram as well. In the YouTube app, Remix and then Edit into a Short takes up to 60 seconds of one of your public videos.

AI clipper for live streams and gaming: it reads the game, not your words

Streams need a different kind of AI clipper. Most clip makers rank moments by what was said, which misses most of what makes a stream worth clipping: a clutch round, a fail, chat going wild. The stream clipper above connects to your Twitch, YouTube or Kick channel, watches your streams and flags highlights from game events in more than a thousand games, from voice and sound peaks and from spikes in chat, then crops them to 9:16 with captions.

If you stream on YouTube, Studio's clip tool also works on archived live streams, so you can cut a highlight into a Short there for free. The speech-led clip makers above can take gameplay too, but a quiet, focused match gives them little to go on. Either way, scrub the stream yourself for the moment you remember: no clipper knows your running jokes.

Long video to short video: how the AI picks the moments, and where it slips

A clip maker turns a long video into short videos in four steps. It transcribes the speech, looks for stretches that stand on their own, scores them, then reframes each one from 16:9 to 9:16 around the face or the subject and adds captions. You can usually set the length, from under a minute to several, and the paid plans of some tools take a prompt such as clips about pricing. The first two seconds still decide whether anyone stays, so check the opening line of each clip (writing hooks is its own job).

Where it slips: a clip opens mid-thought or leans on something said twenty minutes earlier, captions mangle names and numbers, and the crop can drop a slide or a second speaker when it locks onto one face. The virality score is the tool's guess, not a forecast, and nothing reliably makes a video go viral. Watch every clip once before it goes out. The vendors' own help pages tell you to.

turning long videos into shorts: quick answers

How do you clip a YouTube video now that Clips are being replaced?

For someone else's video, you share a timestamp instead. YouTube announced in April 2026 that sharing at a timestamp replaces viewer Clips, and a timestamp link opens the video at your moment with no end point and no description; clips made earlier still play. For your own video, YouTube Studio's Clips and Shorts tool cuts a segment into a new video or a Short, archived live streams included. To turn your own hour into a batch of vertical clips, use one of the clip makers above.

Can you clip a YouTube video that is not yours?

As a timestamp link, yes. Cutting someone else's video into shorts of your own and posting them reuses their work, so you need the owner's permission, and shorts posted without it can come down after a copyright claim. YouTube itself points clippers to authorized creator programs, where a creator invites other people to clip their videos.

What is the best AI clip maker?

The one built for your footage. For podcasts, interviews and talking-head videos, the first two picks above, which differ mostly in billing (per minute of source or per clip); for gaming streams, the stream clipper, which reads game events and chat; for a video already on your YouTube channel, or clips meant only for TikTok, the tools built into each platform. Run the same hour through two free tiers and keep the one that picks the moments you would have picked.

Does an AI shorts maker make videos from scratch?

Not this kind. An AI shorts maker that works from a long video only cuts, crops and captions footage you already have, so the words and faces are yours. Tools that write a script and build new shorts from stock clips and a synthetic voice do a different job: see making YouTube videos automatically. To tighten one long video instead of splitting it, see AI video editing, and for captions alone, adding captions to videos.