AI Clipping Agent: Turn One Long Video Into Shorts
A clipping agent is AI that finds the strongest moments in a long recording and turns them into short vertical videos for TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts. It selects the moments, frames them for 9:16, captions them and prepares each clip for export.
Valmera’s clipping agent looks for complete story arcs, each with a setup, a point and a payoff, rather than cutting fixed-length windows. Each arc becomes its own short, and the AI video editor finishes every one with 9:16 framing and captions. Built for podcasts, interviews, webinars and streams up to 3 hours long.
Turn Your Next Episode Into Shorts
Upload a long recording and let the agent find the stories. Creating an account and uploading are free; editing requires a subscription.
Create an account →How to Turn a Long Video Into Shorts With Valmera
- 1Upload the long recording in Shorts modeA podcast, interview, webinar or stream, up to 3 hours and 100 GB, in MP4, MOV, M4V, MKV or WebM. Optionally add a style reference: a short you like, for the editors to match.
- 2Press Make shortsValmera watches the whole video and picks complete, self-contained stories. Each one becomes its own project, shown as a card on the board.
- 3Press Edit reel on a cardThe agent edits that short: 9:16 framing, captions and a strong opening, following your brief and style reference. The card shows Ready when it’s done.
- 4Refine in chatOpen any short in the editor and ask for changes, exactly as with a full-length edit.
- 5ExportExport each short as a full-resolution MP4, or use Export ready shorts to export every finished short at once.
Why Complete Stories Beat Fixed-Length Windows
A 45-second window cut at an arbitrary point often opens on “and that’s why…” with the reason missing, or ends before the payoff. Valmera’s scout reads the whole transcript first and keeps each story whole, so a short makes sense to someone who never saw the episode. The number of shorts follows the stories in the recording, not a fixed quota.
Prefer to pick the moments yourself? Name them: “Make a short from 41:10 to 42:05” or “every time we talk about hiring.” The same workflow is on the AI clip maker and highlight reel pages.
From 16:9 to 9:16 Without Losing the Subject
A 9:16 crop of a 1920 × 1080 frame is about 608 pixels wide, so roughly two thirds of the picture goes. Valmera’s auto_reframe measures where the subject is before choosing: footage with a speaker gets a crop aimed at them; screen recordings, gameplay and wide shots are fitted over a blurred backdrop so nothing is cut off. Do the math for your own sizes with the free aspect ratio calculator.
Prompts for Clipping
More phrasing ideas are in edit video by chatting with AI.
Review Every Short Before You Post It
| Check | Problem to catch | Fix it with one sentence |
|---|---|---|
| Context | The clip opens with “that’s why…” and the reason is missing | “Start this short eight seconds earlier so the question is included.” |
| Ending | The last thought is cut off | “Let this short run to the end of the sentence.” |
| Captions | A name or number is misspelled | “It says Jon; it’s John.” |
| Framing | The speaker is in frame but the chart is cropped out | “Fit this section instead of cropping so the chart stays visible.” |
| Sound | Music competes with speech | “Lower the music under the speaking parts.” |
For a structured review, download the clipping review worksheet.
Clipping Tools Compared
| Tool | How it clips |
|---|---|
| OpusClip | Generates clip candidates you can revise on a transcript and timeline, including adding source sections |
| Vizard | Its API returns clips with a score and a reason for each recommendation |
| Submagic | An API for long-to-short processing with captions, b-roll, music and effects |
| Klap | An API task generates short-video projects with captions and reframing; export is a separate step |
| Reap | Generate clips, then trim, extend, adjust captions and framing, and export or schedule |
| Descript | Create Clips makes 1–20 editable clips from 10 seconds to five minutes long |
| Valmera | Finds complete story arcs, gives each its own project, and edits every short with the agent |
Competitor details come from each vendor’s documentation, checked September 8, 2026. Clip scores are not comparable across products: OpusClip documents a 0–99 score on its Starter and Pro plans, while Vizard’s API returns a 0–10 field. Use a score to order your review, not to predict views.
Head-to-heads: Valmera vs OpusClip, vs Vizard, vs Submagic and vs Reap; plus OpusClip alternatives.
Run the Clipping Agent From Claude or ChatGPT
Over Valmera’s MCP server, the selection is your assistant’s job rather than Valmera’s scout: it reads the full transcript and passes the source ranges it chose to make_shorts, which only creates the child projects, with no captions or framing yet. It tracks them with shorts_status, opens each with open_short, and edits it with the normal tools; apply_short_edit_batches can save edits for up to 30 shorts in one request. Each short is then exported on its own with export_final. Setup is in using an AI agent that edits video.
Limits
- No posting or scheduling to TikTok, Reels or YouTube: download each MP4 and post it.
- Each short is its own project: edit them one at a time, then export individually or all ready shorts at once.
- Captions are burned in, with no SRT or VTT export.
- English is the best-tested transcription language.
- The agent finds strong stories; which ones fit your channel is still your call.
Frequently Asked Questions
Made with Valmera: real exports
Find the Shorts in Your Long Videos
Upload an episode, let the agent find complete stories, and finish each short in chat. Creating an account and uploading are free.
Create an account →