Want to repurpose your best long-form content into Shorts without hours of editing? The vidIQ Clipping feature instantly turns your full-length videos into ready-to-share Shorts—perfectly reframed, subtitled, and optimized for maximum reach.
🚀 Accessing Clipping
Log in to your vidIQ account.
Click Clipping in the left sidebar. Depending on your account activity, it may appear directly in the menu or under More tools, click that to expand all available tools.
💡 Already logged in? Jump straight to the Clipping tool here: Clipping
✨ Clipping availability depends on your plan and account setup. Free plans include a limited number of credits per month, while higher-tier plans provide significantly more generation capacity.
Note that the Clipping tool has a video duration limit tied to your available credits. For example, if the account has 150 credits left, it can process up to 150 minutes of input video for that month.
🎬 Creating Clips in Minutes
1. Upload your video or paste a YouTube link
Upload a video directly (.mp4 format, up to 1GB, 4K uploads supported; exports are delivered in 1080p vertical to match YouTube Shorts playback and quality guidelines, maximum 2 hours of video length can be processed).
Or paste your YouTube video URL (must be public or unlisted).
Best practices for upload:
Videos should feature faces and speech. Clipping currently cannot process videos without spoken audio. Videos with no audio or only background music may fail to generate clips and might display a generic error message. If this occurs, try uploading a version of the video that includes spoken audio.
Videos should preferably be longer than 3 minutes. Shorter videos may not provide enough material to generate high-performance clips.
Privacy settings must be appropriate. Make sure your video is unlisted, scheduled, or public. Private videos cannot be processed. Live streams may require additional time after the broadcast finishes to be eligible for Clipping.
2. Add a prompt (optional)
Tell the tool what you want clipped (e.g., "clip the biggest reaction" or "focus on the part where I explain X"). If no prompt is provided, Clipping will automatically select the most relevant or engaging moments.
3. Select clip length
Choose how long you'd like your clips to be. You have four options:
Option | Length |
Any Length | Clipping picks the best length based on your content (default) |
Short | 20–45 seconds |
Medium | 45–60 seconds |
Long | 60 seconds or more |
If no length is chosen, the tool will automatically select the best length for each clip.
4. Select language
Choose the language of your video so Clipping can transcribe and caption it accurately. Available languages:
Auto (detects automatically)
Deutsch (German)
English
Español (Spanish)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Português (Portuguese)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Русский (Russian)
हिन्दी (Hindi)
日本語 (Japanese)
💡 Next to the language selector, you'll see the credit cost for processing your video. This updates based on your video length and selected options.
5. Enable and customize Captions
Captions are toggled on by default, but you can disable them using the toggle if you prefer clips without subtitles.
Customizing your captions:
Click the pencil ✏️ icon next to the preset caption style to open the editor.
Use the editor to adjust the font, color, size, and positioning of your captions.
Once you're happy with the look, click Save, and your custom caption style will be applied.
Quick style presets: At the bottom of the captions section, you'll find a row of preset styles. Click any of these to apply that style instantly without using the editor.
6. Select the video portion to clip
The Clipping tool lets you focus on a specific section of your video rather than processing the entire video.
Use the slider or the time fields to set your start and end points.
The selected portion must be at least 30 seconds long.
Example: For a 12-minute video, you could select from 02:21 to 06:13 to focus on just that segment.
This is especially useful if you know exactly which part of your video has the strongest or most engaging moments; you'll save credits and get more relevant clips.
7. Generate your clips
Click Get Clips to start processing.
Processing usually takes 20–30 minutes, depending on your video's length.
If processing appears stalled or shows "1 minute remaining," note that this is an estimate and delays may occur. Ensure you have a stable internet connection and refresh the page.
You'll receive an email notification the moment your clips are ready. No need to wait around.
8. Manage your generated clips
Once your clips are ready, click on the processed video to open the project. You'll see all generated clips, each with a virality score and duration. For each clip, you have three options:
▶️ Publish to YouTube Shorts — upload the clip directly to your YouTube channel.
✂️ Edit clip — open the clip in the editor to fine-tune it.
⬇️ Download clip — save the clip to your device.
You can also Download all clips at once from the top right of the clips window and if your clips don't appear, refresh the page and log out and back into your vidIQ account to resolve display issues.
Edit your clip (optional)
If you want to refine a clip before publishing or downloading, click Edit clip to open the editor. This is useful for trimming scenes, repositioning the subject, fixing caption typos, and more.
The editor has three layers (visible in the timeline at the bottom):
Video track — your raw video
Reframed/cropped track — the vertical version with Fill/Fit segments
Captions track
What you can edit:
Section | What you can adjust |
Layout | Alignment, position (X/Y), dimensions (W/H), and presets (Fill, Fit, Split) for how your subject is framed in vertical format. |
Audio | Volume level (in dB) for specific sections. |
Cuts | Use the scissors ✂️ icon in the timeline to cut, trim, and remove sections you don't want in the final clip. |
Captions – Layout | Alignment, position, and dimensions of the caption block. |
Captions – Font Presets | Apply one of 18 caption styles (Classic Style, Loud & Clear, Talk Show, Creator Cut, Hype Mode, Vlog Pop, Clean Fade, Snap Reaction, Soft Focus, Urban Voice, Renaissance, Chic Cut, Headline Heat, Comic Charge, Pop Blast, Deep Thought, Midnight Read, Grand Statement). |
Captions – Typography | Font (e.g., TikTok Sans), font weight (e.g., Semi Bold), max font size, and text transform (uppercase, lowercase, etc.). |
Captions – Fill | Text color and highlight color. |
Captions – Effects | Toggle Background, Text Shadow, and Animation on or off. |
Captions – Stroke | Stroke width and stroke color (outline around text). |
Captions – Max Lines | Set the maximum number of lines per caption. |
Captions – Script | Click any word in the script to edit it directly. Perfect for fixing typos or rewording. Press Enter to save your changes. You can also adjust the start and end times (in milliseconds) for precise caption timing. |
💡 Most common reason to use the editor: Fixing caption typos in the Script section, removing scenes via cuts, or repositioning the subject so they're centered in the vertical frame.
9. Export, download, or publish
When you're done editing, you have two ways to export your clips:
Option A — Export and download to your device from the editor directly:
Click Export Video at the top right of the editor. The clip will start rendering.
Once rendering is complete, the button becomes Download. Click it to save your edited clip directly to your device.
You can also click Go back to clips at any time to return to your project without losing your edits.
Option B — Publish directly to YouTube Shorts:
After you return to your project window, where your clips are located, whether you're publishing a generated clip directly or an edited one, click Publish to YouTube Shorts to upload it to your channel without leaving vidIQ. A window will open where you can:
Title — name your Short.
Description (optional) — add a description.
Publish Now or Schedule — choose to upload immediately or pick a future date and time.
Privacy status — set to Public, Unlisted, or Private.
Click Publish to upload it directly to your YouTube channel.
🎯 Why Clipping Works
Automatically selects the most engaging moments (unless prompted otherwise).
Reformats for vertical viewing.
Includes clear, automatic subtitles to maximize viewer retention.
Saves hours of manual editing.
In short: Spend less time editing and more time growing your channel.
Ready to create viral-ready Shorts in minutes?