YouTube Video to Shorts — Turn a Long Video into Several Shorts
Paste the link of your long YouTube video and get several vertical Shorts with captions, chosen by AI. Faster than YouTube's one-clip editor.
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Your long YouTube videos already contain your next Shorts. The intro story, the surprising number at minute 8, the answer to the question everyone asks in the comments: each of them can stand on its own in a vertical feed and send viewers back to the full video.
Clipfox finds those moments for you. Paste the link, and it returns several vertical Shorts, reframed on the speaker, with captions burned in and a title for each.
YouTube's built-in option, and its limits
YouTube lets you create a Short from one of your videos in the mobile app: open the video, tap Remix, then Edit into a Short, and choose a segment. It's free and it works, but:
- you have to know where the good moment is, so you rewatch your own video;
- you get one clip at a time;
- the framing is up to you, and the captions are a separate step.
Clipfox is built for the opposite case: you want five or ten Shorts from one video, without rewatching it.
How it works
- Paste the YouTube link of your video, or upload the original file for the best quality.
- Choose vertical 9:16, and how many Shorts you want, up to ten.
- Optionally set a maximum length, for example 45 or 60 seconds, and a caption style.
- Review and download. Every Short has a title, a score and its timecode in the original video.
Upload the original if you can
Every time a video is re-encoded, it loses a little detail. A YouTube link gives Clipfox the version YouTube serves, while the file from your camera or editor is usually sharper. If you have it, upload the original.
The reframing also matters: a 1080p landscape video cropped to vertical keeps a 607-pixel-wide slice of the image. If you film in 4K, your vertical Shorts keep far more detail, and the Pro plan exports up to 4K when the source has it.
Make the Shorts work for the long video
- Link them. In YouTube Studio, a Short can point to a related video. Use it to send viewers to the full version.
- Start strong. Pick the Shorts whose first sentence works as a hook; the title Clipfox suggests often tells you which ones.
- Stagger them. Publishing the Shorts over the days after the long video keeps it surfacing.
What a real run looks like
We tested Clipfox on two long talking videos: a 14-minute podcast gave 10 clips, and a 29-minute live show gave 10 clips spread over the whole running time. The details are in how many clips you get from a long video, and the complete method, by hand and with AI, is in how to turn a long video into Shorts.
Streaming on Twitch too? See Twitch stream to clips.
Turn your YouTube video into Shorts — 30 free minutes every month with a free account.