Sermon clip maker: turn church services into Shorts and Reels
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.
A Sunday service streamed to YouTube or Facebook is often 90 minutes: worship, announcements, a 40-minute sermon, prayer. Mark where the sermon starts and ends, paste the replay link, and OpenShorts reads the message word by word and cuts the 6 to 12 passages that hold up on their own into vertical clips, with captions and the preacher kept in frame as they move.
That is a clip a day until next Sunday, made in the time it takes the replay to process, by whoever runs the church's social accounts, without an editor.
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 sermon into clips
1. Paste the service replay
Copy the link of the YouTube or Facebook Live replay (or Vimeo, or upload the recording from your stream computer). Use "clip only part of it" to mark where the sermon starts and ends, so the songs and announcements stay out.
2. The AI finds the moments in the message
The sermon is transcribed word by word, and Gemini ranks every stretch of it for how well it would land with someone who was not in the room: a story, a single clear point, a line people would repeat. The strongest are cut on sentence boundaries.
3. Captioned vertical clips for the week
Each clip comes back 9:16, following the preacher across the platform, with captions and a hook. Fix the spelling of names in the caption editor, then schedule them across the week to YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok, or download them.
Start from the sermon, not the whole service
Most of a recorded service is not clip material for social media: the countdown, the worship set, the welcome, the notices, the offering. The sermon is. So before pasting the link, note roughly where the message begins and ends in the replay and use clip only part of it to set those two points. Only that stretch is downloaded and analysed, which does three things at once: the AI ranks passages of the message against each other instead of against the songs, the clips carry no music you may not have the rights to post, and on OpenShorts Cloud you are billed for the 40 minutes you picked instead of the 90 the replay runs.
If you would rather not trim, it still works: the model reads the whole transcript and the spoken parts score far higher than lyrics. Trimming simply removes the guesswork.
What makes sermon clips work on a phone
A clip on someone's phone has to make sense with no context: they did not hear the reading, the series title or the first point. The scoring is built for exactly that. The transcript is split into windows of about 90 seconds and Gemini scores every one on hook strength, emotional payload and how well it stands alone; the best go to a second pass that cuts each clip on sentence boundaries, 15 to 60 seconds long by default. In practice the passages that win are a story told in full, one clear point stated plainly, a question put to the listener, or the line people would repeat on the way out. Long arguments that depend on the previous ten minutes tend not to, which is the right call for the feed.
Each clip also gets a hook line over its opening seconds, written from what is said in that clip, and a title and description for each platform. Read them before posting: they are written by a model, and your church has its own voice.
Filming a church: one preacher, a stage, sometimes two people
A preacher who moves
Few preachers stay behind a pulpit. The tracker follows the face with a stabiliser that holds the frame still while the preacher stays inside a safe zone and only moves when they step out of it, so the vertical clip looks like a steady camera operator rather than a crop chasing every gesture. When your production cuts between a close camera and a wide one, each shot is framed on its own.
Interviews, panels and interpreters
When two people share the shot for most of a scene (a guest interview, a Q&A, a sermon preached with an interpreter beside the speaker), the clip is stacked: one person in each half of the vertical frame, and the captions sit on the seam between them, where they cover neither face.
Scripture and slides
If your stream shows the verse or the sermon slides full screen, those shots are kept readable rather than cropped to a narrow strip: a screen keeps its width, and a presenter beside it is stacked under the slide. Burned-in subtitles already in the stream are noticed and trimmed off the bottom before OpenShorts adds its own, so you do not get two layers of text.
Real OpenShorts output, not a mock-up. A two-person conversation from a church media ministry: both speakers stacked in half-frames, captions on the seam where they cover nobody. Source: Turn the Tables with Dan and Shoshana Jordan, Heritage of Faith, CC BY.
Captions, names and other languages
Most people watch these clips with the sound off, so captions are burned in from a transcript with a timestamp on every word. Speech recognition spells what it hears, which means unusual names, places and some book names can come out wrong: open the subtitle editor, correct the text, and the timing is kept. Styles can be changed in the same place.
For a church that serves more than one language, captions follow the language that was spoken, and with your own ElevenLabs API key the dubbing option translates a clip into more than 30 languages, keeping the preacher's voice and re-captioning it in the new language.
A week of clips, scheduled once
Connect the church's YouTube, Instagram and TikTok accounts in the dashboard, select the clips and use schedule a week to spread them one a day at the hour you pick, so the sermon Shorts and Reels go out while the message is still fresh. YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels publish directly. TikTok receives each clip as a draft in its inbox, to be posted from the app, which is TikTok's rule for videos sent from other tools.
If the service is streamed to a YouTube channel every week, Autopilot can do it without anyone opening the dashboard: on a paid plan it clips each new video on the channel and, with publishing on, schedules the best clips one a day. One setting matters for churches: Autopilot clips the first 10 to 90 minutes of each video (30 by default), so if the sermon starts 35 minutes in, set it to 60 or 90 or it will clip the worship set.
Church video clips beyond the sermon
The same clipper works on any part of church life that is mostly someone talking: a testimony, a guest speaker, a youth talk, a Bible study, a conference session, a Q&A with the pastor. Paste the replay or upload the recording and you get church video clips cut the same way, on sentence boundaries, captioned and vertical. What it is not built for is the music: the lyrics of a worship set score far below speech, and the song rights question above applies to any clip of it.
Where the replay can come from
YouTube and Facebook Live replays are the usual sources and both are pasted as links once the stream has ended; Vimeo works the same way. If the service was recorded locally (by the stream computer or a recorder on the sound desk), upload the file instead: a local recording is often better quality than the stream, and uploads work on every plan. Private and unlisted-by-sign-in videos cannot be fetched from a link.
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) |
| 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 |
Per-minute meters (Opus Clip, Vizard, Quso and OpenShorts Cloud alike) count the whole replay if you import the whole replay. Marking only the sermon is the difference between 40 and 90 minutes on any of them, and on OpenShorts Cloud you can do that marking before the job starts.
What it does not do
- It does not clip the service while it is live. It works on the replay.
- It does not check song licences. If a clip contains worship music, whether you may post it is between you and your licence.
- It does not add scripture references or graphics. Add a verse reference to the caption or description yourself.
- It does not post to Facebook. Download the clip and post it there yourself.
- It does not guarantee spelling of names. Proofread the captions before posting.
- Free clips carry a watermark. A paid plan removes it, from earlier clips as well.
Whose sermons can you clip
Your own church's, and those you have permission for: a guest speaker's message with their agreement, a network or denomination that has given its churches the right to share. A sermon belongs to whoever preached and recorded it, and platforms remove reuploads when the owner reports them. Each job asks you to confirm the rights before it runs.
Common questions
- Is this sermon 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. Marking just the sermon keeps a whole service inside that first video. Paid plans start at $12/month with no watermark; the self-hosted edition is free under MIT.
- Do the free sermon clips have a watermark?
- Yes, on the hosted free plan. Moving to a paid plan removes it from new clips and from the ones already made. Self-hosted OpenShorts never adds one.
- How many clips does one sermon give?
- A sermon longer than about 12 minutes is asked for 6 to 12 clips, enough for one a day through the week, and fewer come back when fewer passages stand alone. You can set an exact number from 1 to 15.
- Can I clip only the sermon and skip the worship set?
- Yes. "Clip only part of it" lets you set a start and an end. Only that stretch is downloaded, analysed and counted against your minutes.
- Can we post clips of the worship songs?
- Be careful. The songs belong to their writers and publishers, and a licence that covers streaming your service does not necessarily cover cutting a song into a clip and posting it on social media. Check the terms of your licence. Clips of the preaching avoid the question.
- Does it follow a pastor who walks the stage?
- Yes. The preacher's face is tracked, and a stabiliser holds the frame still while they stay inside a safe zone and only moves when they leave it, so the clip looks like a camera operator, not a chase.
- What about a guest interview or a sermon with an interpreter?
- When two people are visible in the same shot for most of a scene, the clip is stacked: one person in each half of the vertical frame, captions on the seam between them.
- Will it spell names and Bible books correctly?
- Speech recognition spells names the way they sound, so check unusual names and book names before posting. The caption text is editable in the subtitle editor and the timing is kept.
- Can clips be made in Spanish or another language?
- Captions follow the language that was spoken. With your own ElevenLabs API key, dubbing can also translate a clip into more than 30 languages in the preacher's voice and re-caption it.
- Can new services be clipped automatically every week?
- Yes, with Autopilot on a paid plan, for services streamed to a connected YouTube channel. It clips the first 10 to 90 minutes of each new video (your choice), so set it long enough to reach the sermon. With publishing on, it schedules the best clips one a day.
- Can it make church clips from more than sermons?
- Yes, from anything in the service or the week where someone is speaking: testimonies, guest speakers, youth talks, Bible studies, conference sessions. Songs score far below speech and carry their own rights questions, so leave them out with "clip only part of it".
- How does it compare with Opus Clip?
- Opus Clip also cuts sermons into clips. Its free plan is 60 credits a month with a watermark and it bills one credit per imported minute, from $15/month (checked 5 October 2026), so a 90-minute service uses 90 credits unless you trim it first. OpenShorts lets you clip only the sermon, and is open source and self-hostable.
Sources
- Competitor plans: our comparison data, checked 5 October 2026. See OpenShorts vs Vizard.
- Autopilot window (first 10 to 90 minutes, 30 by default) and scheduling:
cloud/autopilot.py; split layout and caption seam:split_layout.py,subtitles.pyat github.com/mutonby/openshorts.