YouTube to Shorts converter
Paste a link — YouTube, Twitch, X, Facebook, Loom, Streamable — or upload the file. Clippen returns about 10 vertical clips from any video long enough to hold them, each 15 to 60 seconds, at 1080×1920 with word-level captions burned in and a hook on the opening seconds.
We email you the moment they are ready. The job runs on our servers, so you can close the tab.
Use it on videos you own or have the right to use. Clipping other people's uploads is between you and the destination platform.
How do you convert a YouTube video into Shorts?
Three steps, and only the first one needs you.
- Paste the YouTube URL, or upload the source file directly if you would rather not go through the link.
- Pick your output ratio and clip length, or leave both on automatic. Clippen exports 9:16, 1:1 and 16:9, and the default clip band is 15 to 60 seconds.
- Start the job and leave. It runs server-side; the finished clips are in your library when you come back.
What arrives is not a set of raw cuts. Each clip has already been recomposed to 9:16 around whoever is speaking, captioned word by word with the spoken word highlighted as it lands, and given an AI-written hook headline over the opening seconds where a short-form viewer decides whether to stay. That is the difference between a converter and a cropper: cropping a 16:9 video to 9:16 throws away three quarters of the width and leaves you with an armpit and a microphone.
If a clip is not quite right, the reframing, caption and hook stages are exposed, so you can fix it without exporting into a separate editor.
Does it work with any YouTube video?
Technically it works with long-form YouTube video generally: talking heads, interviews, podcasts, webinars, conference talks, stream VODs and screen recordings all go through the same pipeline. The real answer is narrower than the technical one, and it is worth being blunt about it.
Clippen is built for clipping video you own or have the right to use — your own podcast, your own stream, your own talk. You keep every right you already had in the source and in the clips; Clippen takes no licence beyond processing the file you submit. Clipping someone else's upload is between you and the destination platform: YouTube's inauthentic content policy of July 2025 names recycled clips explicitly.
Clippen is built for the person who owns the source — your channel, your podcast, your talk, your stream. That is not a legal disclaimer bolted on at the end; it shapes the product. The layouts exist to make a clip look like your show rather than like a repost, and Clippen deliberately does not build the duplicate-detection evasion that tools aimed at reposting advertise.
YouTube's inauthentic content policy, effective July 2025, names mass-produced and recycled clips as ineligible for monetisation. Nobody can promise you how a platform will treat a given post, and anyone who does is selling you something they cannot deliver.
What do you get back?
about 10 clips from any video, not a per-hour rate: a six-minute talk and a two-hour episode aim for the same number. Only a source too short to hold them comes back with fewer, because a clip cannot be shorter than fifteen seconds. The selection reflects that rather than padding to a number.
- Format: 1080×1920 vertical, with 9:16, 1:1 and 16:9 available on every run.
- Length: 15 to 60 seconds by default, which is the band that fits Shorts, Reels and TikTok without a second trim.
- Captions: burned in, word by word, with the spoken word highlighted. The language is detected automatically.
- Hook: an AI-written headline over the opening seconds.
- Dubbing: optional, into 31 languages, with the captions re-transcribed to match the new audio.
- Delivery: download the files, or post straight to TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts from the dashboard.
The reason to care about the count is retention rather than any one clip. A channel that posts four to nine shorts from an episode is running a different experiment from one that posts a single clip and hopes. Which of them lands is not something a tool can predict for you, which is exactly why volume from material you already have is the part worth automating.
How long does it take, and what does it cost?
We email you the moment they are ready, so nothing is finished by you watching a progress bar. You do not watch it happen — the job is queued server-side and the clips appear in your library.
Clippen is a paid tool and bills by the length of what you feed it: one credit is one minute of source video, and that one charge covers the whole run — every clip the video yields, the vertical reframing, the captions and the hook. A 60-minute podcast costs 60 credits whether it comes back with six clips or twelve. Plans start at $19.99 a month for 150 credits ($11.66 a month billed annually) and run to $59.99 a month for 800 credits. There is no free tier.
Worked through: a 12-minute YouTube video costs 12 credits. A 47-minute one costs 47. The number on the invoice is the length of what you fed in, which means you can price a month of publishing before you run a single job. See how the pipeline works for what those credits actually buy at each stage.
Common questions
- Can I convert a YouTube video to Shorts without downloading it first?
- Yes. Paste the URL and Clippen ingests the video for you. Uploading the source file directly is also supported, which is the more reliable route for unlisted or private material and for anything with restricted access.
- How many Shorts will I get from one video?
- About ten from any video long enough to hold them, each 15 to 60 seconds long. It is not a per-hour rate: a six-minute talk and a two-hour episode aim for the same number, and only a source too short to fit ten comes back with fewer.
- Are the captions burned in or a separate file?
- Burned in, word by word, with each word highlighted as it is spoken. That is what Shorts, Reels and TikTok viewers see with the sound off, and it does not depend on a platform reading a sidecar file. The spoken language is detected automatically.
- Can I post directly to YouTube Shorts from Clippen?
- Yes. Connect the account and post to TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts from the dashboard, or download the files and publish them however you already do. Posting is one clip at a time, on purpose: there is no queue that machine-guns dozens of accounts.
- Does it work on videos I do not own?
- Clippen is built for clipping video you own or have the right to use. What happens to a clip of someone else's upload is between you and the destination platform, and YouTube's inauthentic content policy of July 2025 names recycled clips explicitly. Clippen does not alter exports to evade duplicate detection.
- How do I convert a YouTube video into Shorts?
- Paste the link into Clippen — YouTube, Twitch, X, Facebook, Loom or Streamable — or upload the source file, then start the job. The pipeline transcribes the audio at word level, finds the shot boundaries, selects the strongest self-contained moments and returns them as 9:16 clips with captions burned in and a hook on the opening seconds.
- How long does a YouTube to Shorts conversion take?
- It depends on the length of the video and on the queue, and we deliberately do not quote a figure — a promised time that is missed is worse than none at all. The job runs on our servers, so you can close the tab; we email you the moment the clips are ready.
- What does the YouTube to Shorts converter cost?
- Clippen is a paid tool and bills by the length of what you feed it: one credit is one minute of source video, and that one charge covers the whole run — every clip the video yields, the vertical reframing, the captions and the hook. A 60-minute podcast costs 60 credits whether it comes back with six clips or twelve. Plans start at $19.99 a month for 150 credits ($11.66 a month billed annually) and run to $59.99 a month for 800 credits. There is no free tier.