TikTok clip maker: turn long videos into TikToks
First video free up to 60 min, then 20 min a month, watermarked, no card. No watermark from $12/month, or self-host free under MIT.
No link? Upload the file in the app instead. Sources need at least 45 seconds of material.
Take a 30-minute YouTube video that did well. Pasted here, it comes back as a stack of vertical clips, 6 to 12 of them for a source that long, each 15 to 60 seconds, captioned for the muted autoplay most TikToks start in and opened by a hook line written from what is said in that clip.
Send them to your TikTok account from the dashboard and they wait in your TikTok inbox as drafts, where you add the sound, the hashtags and the caption the way TikTok rewards. Or download the files and post them however you like.
Free plan: your first video clipped whole up to 60 minutes, then 20 minutes a month, with a watermark and no credit card. Paid plans start at $12/month with no watermark, and the self-hosted edition is free under MIT.
How to turn a long video into TikToks
1. Paste the long video
A YouTube link is the usual start, but any public video link from the sites listed on this page works, a long TikTok included. Or upload the recording.
2. AI cuts the TikToks
Gemini reads the word-level transcript, ranks every stretch for how well it would hold a stranger, and cuts the best ones on sentence boundaries, 15 to 60 seconds each by default.
3. Send them to TikTok
Each clip comes back 9:16 with captions and a hook. Send it to your TikTok account from the dashboard, where it lands as a draft for you to finish with a sound and hashtags, or download the MP4.
YouTube to TikTok without the download step
The usual way to get a YouTube video onto TikTok is a chain of tools: a downloader, an editor to find the moment and crop it to vertical, a caption app, and then the upload. Each step loses quality or time. Here the YouTube link is the only input: OpenShorts fetches the source at the best quality it offers, does the cutting, reframing and captioning in one pass, and hands you finished vertical files, at least 1080 pixels wide.
That also works for the videos you never posted to YouTube. A Zoom or Riverside recording, a webinar, a podcast episode recorded locally: upload the file instead of pasting a link and the rest is the same.
What a TikTok clip needs that a YouTube video does not have
A horizontal video dropped onto TikTok as it is plays as a thin strip with black bars, and people scroll past it. Three things turn a moment from a long video into something that works in the For You feed:
Vertical framing that keeps the person
Cropping 16:9 to 9:16 throws away two thirds of the width. A fixed centre crop loses anyone who is not sitting in the middle, so each clip is reframed by what is in it: the speaker is tracked with face detection and a stabiliser that holds still instead of chasing every head movement, two people in the same shot are stacked one above the other, and a screen share keeps the screen readable with the presenter below. See auto reframe for how each layout is chosen.
Captions you can read on mute
Captions are burned in from a transcript with a timestamp on every word, so they appear as the word is spoken. They sit about 15% above the bottom edge, which keeps them clear of TikTok's own caption, username and music line at the bottom of the screen. Styles can be changed after the job; the dubbing option (with your own ElevenLabs key) can also translate a clip into more than 30 languages and re-caption it in the new language.
A reason to stay in the first second
A hook line is generated for each clip from what is said in it and drawn over the opening seconds. Its height is chosen per clip so it covers the least of anyone's face, inside the part of the screen the app does not cover.
Why clips arrive on TikTok as drafts
This surprises people, so it is worth explaining before you connect your account. When OpenShorts sends a clip to TikTok it goes through TikTok's upload API, and that API delivers the video to your TikTok inbox as a draft, not as a live post. You get a notification in the TikTok app, open the draft, and post it from there. TikTok's draft upload carries the video only, so the title and description written for the clip do not come with it: you write the caption in the app.
That is less of a limitation than it sounds. Finishing the post inside TikTok is where you pick a trending sound, add effects, tag people and write hashtags, which a post made outside the app cannot do. Instagram and YouTube, by contrast, are published directly. Scheduling a week of clips works for TikTok too; each draft lands at its scheduled time.
Using TikTok videos as the source
The box above also takes TikTok links, which is useful the other way round: a long TikTok upload with a great 40 seconds in the middle can be cut down for Reels or Shorts. Two limits apply. The source needs at least 45 seconds of material, so most TikToks are already as short as they should be. And a TikTok LIVE cannot be clipped while it is on air; save the replay and upload it.
Free tier compared
Competitor plans checked 5 October 2026 on their public pricing pages.
| Tool | Free plan | Paid from |
|---|---|---|
| OpenShorts Cloud | First video up to 60 min, then 20 min/month. Watermark, no credit card | $12/month, 100 min, no watermark |
| OpenShorts self-hosted | Free under MIT. No watermark, no cap; your hardware and API keys | $0 |
| Klap | 1 video. To try it, no ongoing free tier | $14/month billed yearly |
| Opus Clip | 60 min/mo. Watermarked, export within 3 days | $15/month |
| Quso | 75 min/mo. 720p, data kept 7 days | $19/month billed yearly ($29 monthly) |
| Submagic | None. A trial with no credit card | $12/month billed yearly |
For TikTok, what you are billed for matters more than the headline price. Klap bills the clips it generates and says its algorithm leans on speech, so a gameplay or music-heavy source gives it little to work with. Opus Clip and Quso bill the minutes you import. Submagic is captions-first and caps the length of each video by plan. OpenShorts Cloud bills source minutes too, and lets you clip only part of a long video to spend fewer of them.
What it does not do
- It does not post TikToks live. They arrive as drafts, by TikTok's design, and you finish them in the app.
- It does not add trending sounds or TikTok effects. Those are added in TikTok, on the draft.
- It does not clip a TikTok LIVE in real time, and it cannot fetch private TikToks.
- It does not take sources under 45 seconds.
- It does not write hashtags into the draft, since TikTok drops the description on drafts.
- Free clips carry a watermark. Paid plans remove it, from earlier clips as well.
Whose videos can you turn into TikToks
Your own and those you have permission for. Reposting a creator's video to TikTok without permission is a copyright claim waiting to happen, and TikTok removes reuploads when the owner reports them. Every OpenShorts job asks you to confirm you have the rights before it runs.
Common questions
- Is this TikTok clip maker free?
- The hosted free plan clips your first video whole up to 60 minutes, then 20 minutes a month, with a watermark and no credit card. Paid plans start at $12/month without the watermark. Self-hosted OpenShorts is free under MIT with no watermark and no cap.
- Is there a watermark on the TikToks?
- On the hosted free plan, yes; paying removes it from new and existing clips.
- Why does my clip show up as a draft on TikTok?
- Because TikTok's API delivers videos sent from other apps to your TikTok inbox as drafts. You get a notification in the app, then add the caption, a sound and hashtags there and post it. The title and description written for the clip are not carried onto a TikTok draft, so you paste or write them in the app.
- How do I turn a YouTube video into TikToks?
- Paste the YouTube link above. The video is fetched, transcribed and cut into vertical clips with captions and hooks, which you can send to TikTok or download. You do not need to download the YouTube video first.
- Can I clip a TikTok video or a TikTok LIVE?
- A public TikTok video link works as a source if it has at least 45 seconds of material, which mostly means long uploads. A LIVE cannot be clipped while it is on air; if you saved the replay, upload that file.
- How long should a TikTok clip be?
- The default here is 15 to 60 seconds, because that is how long most moments that stand alone run. TikTok accepts far longer uploads; raise the maximum up to 180 seconds in the advanced options for a story that needs it.
- How many TikToks does one video give?
- A video longer than about 12 minutes is asked for 6 to 12 clips, and fewer come back when fewer moments stand alone. You can ask for an exact number from 1 to 15.
- Is it an AI TikTok generator?
- It is a clipper: every TikTok is cut from your own footage. For videos made from a script with no footage at all, the AI Shorts tab makes UGC-style videos with AI actors, from $0.65 a video.
- Can I schedule TikToks?
- Yes. Schedule a week spreads a batch of clips over the coming days. On TikTok each one still arrives as a draft at its scheduled time, so you finish it in the app.
- How does it compare with Klap or Opus Clip for TikTok?
- All three cut long videos into TikToks. Klap is the fastest path from a link to a first clip but gives one free video and bills clips (from $14/month billed yearly); Opus Clip has a watermarked free plan of 60 credits a month and paid plans from $15/month. Both checked 5 October 2026. OpenShorts is open source, self-hostable, and hosted from $12/month billed monthly.
Sources
- TikTok draft behaviour: TikTok for Developers, Content Posting API (videos uploaded to the inbox arrive as drafts to be posted from the app), checked 28 October 2026.
- Competitor plans: our comparison data, checked 5 October 2026. See OpenShorts vs Klap.
- Caption margin and hook placement:
subtitles.pyandhook_placement.pyat github.com/mutonby/openshorts.