YouTube clip maker: clip a YouTube video from its link
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.
Paste the link of a 40-minute interview and OpenShorts reads all of it: a transcript with a timestamp on every word, a map of the camera cuts, and a score for each 90-second stretch. The ten best stretches go to a second pass that cuts the clips, and for a source that long it is asked for 6 to 12 of them, each 15 to 60 seconds, each opening on a sentence rather than halfway through one.
Every clip comes back vertical, captioned and with a hook line over the first seconds, ready to post as a Short, a TikTok or a Reel. You never download the YouTube video or upload it again.
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 the YouTube clip maker works
1. Paste the YouTube link
Copy the address of the video (a watch link, a youtu.be share link, a Shorts link or the replay of a finished livestream) and paste it in the box. OpenShorts fetches the video itself, so there is nothing to download first.
2. The AI finds the moments
The audio is transcribed word by word and the video is scanned for cuts. Google Gemini then scores the whole transcript in windows of about 90 seconds, shortlists the strongest and cuts each moment so it opens on a complete thought, 15 to 60 seconds long unless you set other limits.
3. Reframe, caption, export or post
Each clip is reframed to 9:16 so the speaker stays in the frame, captions are burned in from the word-level transcript and a hook line is drawn over the opening seconds. Download the MP4s, or post them to YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram from the dashboard.
What one real job looks like
The clip below came out of a 39-minute interview pasted as a YouTube link, untouched. Nobody chose the moment, set a crop or typed a caption: Gemini picked the passage from the transcript, the face tracker kept the speaker in a frame a third the width of the original, and the words on screen are the transcript's own, timed word by word.
Real OpenShorts output, not a mock-up. A 39-minute interview: Gemini picked the moment, the crop follows the speaker, and the captions come from the word-level transcript. Source: Startup Founder & CEO Mark Bush on How to Overcome Adversity, Foundation for Economic Education, CC BY.
That is the default path. Everything in it can be overridden afterwards: the clip editor shows which stretches of the source a clip was cut from and lets you trim, extend, split or reorder them, snapped to word boundaries; the reframe editor lets you move the crop scene by scene where the tracker chose wrong; captions can be restyled and the hook rewritten.
Clipping on YouTube versus making clips from YouTube
YouTube has its own Clip button, and it is worth knowing what it is before choosing a tool. A YouTube clip is a 5 to 60 second selection that stays on YouTube: it plays from the original video, it can only be watched by people who can watch that video, and you share it as a link. It is a bookmark with a start and an end, not a file. It stays horizontal, has no burned-in captions and cannot be posted to TikTok or Instagram.
A clip maker produces new videos. What comes out of OpenShorts is a set of separate MP4 files in 9:16, each one reframed, captioned and titled, that you keep like any other export and can upload anywhere. When people search for a "YouTube video clip converter" this is usually what they mean: turn the long horizontal upload into short vertical pieces, not save a timestamp.
If you only need one moment and would rather cut it by hand, how to clip a YouTube video walks through the four free ways: the Clip button, YouTube Studio, ffmpeg, and an AI clipper for Shorts.
Which links it takes
Anything that points at one public video works: a
watch?v= page, a youtu.be share link (with or
without a timestamp), a Shorts link, an embed link, or the replay of a
livestream once it has ended. The box above checks the shape before sending you
on, because the server refuses the rest anyway: a playlist, a channel, an
@handle page or a search results page is not one video, and
walking through every video behind it is never what you meant.
What cannot be fetched: private videos, members-only videos and anything YouTube puts behind a sign-in, such as age-restricted uploads. For those, download the file from YouTube Studio if it is yours and upload it in the app instead. Uploads work on every plan, the free one included.
Works with links from other sites too
The same box takes public video links from YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, X (Twitter), Twitch, Kick, Facebook, Instagram, Dailymotion, Reddit and Streamable. Some of those have their own page here because they behave differently (Twitch and Kick VODs run for hours, TikTok and Instagram are usually destinations rather than sources). The rest work exactly like a YouTube link:
- Vimeo: public videos and links to a single video in a showcase. Password-protected Vimeo links cannot be fetched; download the file and upload it.
- X (Twitter): the link of a post that carries a video. Long uploads are where clipping pays off.
- Facebook: public videos and the replays of public Facebook Lives, which is where many churches, local newsrooms and webinar hosts stream.
- Reddit: the link of a video post, including
v.redd.itlinks. - Dailymotion and Streamable: any public video link.
If a site is not on that list the box tells you so and still lets you try, because the downloader behind it understands far more sites than the ones we test. When a link fails, uploading the file is the fallback that always works.
Choosing how many clips, and how long
By default the length of the video decides. The scoring pass shortlists roughly one window per 90 seconds of source, capped at ten, and the cutting pass is asked for a number of clips that grows with that shortlist: three to six for a two-minute video, four to ten for five minutes, six to twelve for anything past about twelve minutes. Those are targets for the model, and an empty answer is accepted where a padded one would not be. The floor is enforced in code rather than left to the prompt, so a long video does not collapse to a single clip.
Open advanced options to override any of it: an exact number of clips from 1 to 15, a minimum length from 5 to 175 seconds and a maximum from 10 to 180. And for a long video where you only care about one part, clip only part of it lets you pick the start and the end, so only that stretch is analysed and only that stretch counts against your minutes.
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 |
| Opus Clip | 60 min/mo. Watermarked, export within 3 days | $15/month |
| Vizard | 60 min/mo. 720p, watermark, exports up to 10 min | $14.50/month billed yearly ($29 monthly) |
| Klap | 1 video. To try it, no ongoing free tier | $14/month billed yearly |
| 2short.ai | 30 min/mo. No watermark, YouTube links only | $9.90/month |
The meter is what to compare, more than the free allowance. Opus Clip and Vizard count every minute of the video you import, whatever number of clips you keep; Klap counts clips; 2short.ai counts hours analysed and takes YouTube links only on its free plan. OpenShorts Cloud also counts source minutes, which is why picking a stretch of a long video matters there, and the self-hosted edition counts nothing.
What it does not do
- It does not clip a stream while it is live. Paste the replay once the broadcast has ended.
- It does not fetch private, members-only or sign-in-only videos. Upload the file instead.
- It does not take sources under 45 seconds. There has to be enough material to cut from; a video that is already a Short is better posted as it is.
- It does not add stock B-roll or music. The clip is your footage, reframed and captioned.
- It does not guarantee a clip count. A video with three good minutes gives fewer clips than one with thirty; the AI returns what stands alone.
- The free plan is watermarked. The mark goes when you upgrade, from new and existing clips alike.
Whose videos you can clip
Your own, and those you have the rights to: your channel, the channels of clients you manage, a guest's episode with their blessing, licensed or public-domain footage. Each job asks you to confirm that before it starts. OpenShorts fetches what you point it at; it does not decide whether you are allowed to repost it, and YouTube, TikTok and Instagram all remove reuploads of other people's work when the owner complains. Channels that post famous creators' moments do it with the creator's permission, often through a clipping programme the creator runs, or at the risk of strikes.
Common questions
- Is this YouTube clip maker free?
- On OpenShorts Cloud the free plan clips your first video whole up to 60 minutes, then 20 minutes of source video a month, with a watermark and no credit card. Paid plans start at $12/month and remove the watermark. The self-hosted edition is free and open source under MIT, with no watermark and no cap, on your own hardware and API keys.
- Do free clips have a watermark?
- Yes, on the hosted free plan. Upgrading to a paid plan removes it, including from the clips you already made: the clean file is kept alongside the marked copy, so nothing is rendered again. The self-hosted edition never adds one.
- Do I need a credit card to start?
- No. You sign in with Google or an email link and the free minutes are there. A card is only asked for when you choose a paid plan.
- How many clips does one YouTube video give?
- It depends on the length and on how much of it stands alone. For anything longer than about 12 minutes the AI is asked for 6 to 12 clips, and it returns fewer rather than padding when the material does not hold them. You can pin an exact number from 1 to 15 in the advanced options.
- How long can the YouTube video be?
- There is no fixed maximum on the link itself; the limit that matters is your minute balance on Cloud. On the free plan a source longer than your balance is clipped from the start up to what you have left (your first video is clipped whole up to 60 minutes). The minimum is 45 seconds of material. You can also pick just a stretch of a long video and pay only for that stretch.
- How long is each clip?
- Between 15 and 60 seconds by default. In the advanced options you can set the minimum anywhere from 5 to 175 seconds and the maximum from 10 to 180 seconds, which covers the 3-minute ceiling of a YouTube Short.
- What format are the clips?
- MP4 files in 9:16, at least 1080 pixels wide (1080x1920 from a 1080p source), with captions and the hook burned in. Each clip also comes with an AI-written title and description.
- Which YouTube links work?
- Any link to one public video: watch pages, youtu.be links, Shorts, embeds and the replays of finished livestreams. Playlists, channels and search pages are refused because they are not one video; open the video and paste its own link. Private and members-only videos cannot be fetched.
- Can I clip someone else's YouTube video?
- Only with the rights to it: your own channel, a client's channel you manage, a guest's episode with their permission, or licensed and public-domain footage. Every job asks you to confirm that. Reposting other people's videos without permission is copyright infringement and the platforms remove it.
- How is it different from Opus Clip or Vizard?
- All three take a YouTube link and return vertical clips. Opus Clip and Vizard are closed cloud products with free plans of 60 credits a month (checked 5 October 2026); OpenShorts is open source and can be self-hosted, and its hosted plans are billed monthly from $12. Vizard has the more complete hand-editing timeline, and Opus Clip the larger caption-style library.
Sources
- YouTube Help: Create and share clips (clips are 5 to 60 seconds and play from the original video), checked 28 October 2026.
- Competitor free plans and entry prices: our comparison data, checked 5 October 2026. See the full comparison.
- Clip counts, window size and the clip-count floor are in
clip_selection.py; the length and count limits are the ones the API enforces. Source: github.com/mutonby/openshorts.