ShortsAIA YouTube clip maker that starts from the link
Paste a YouTube URL into ShortsAI and it downloads the video, finds the best moments and returns them as 9:16 clips with subtitles and a hook title.
It is for videos you own or have the rights to clip. The confirmation checkbox at upload is not decoration.
Completely free: no paid tier, no watermark, no usage cap.
How do you make a clip from a YouTube video?
- Copy the video URL from YouTube.
- Paste it into the video URL tab in ShortsAI and confirm you own the content or hold the rights to it.
- Choose 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok, or keep 16:9 for a landscape clip.
- Process. The video is downloaded at source resolution, transcribed, scene-detected and scored, and 3 to 15 clips come back.
- Edit any clip if you want different boundaries or a different subtitle style, then download or publish.
Nothing is uploaded from your browser: the server fetches the video from the link, which is why a 2-hour livestream recording is no harder to start than a 5-minute vlog.
What is the difference between this and YouTube's own clip feature?
YouTube's built-in Clips share a 5 to 60 second segment of an existing video as a link; the clip lives on YouTube and plays inside the original. A YouTube clip maker like ShortsAI produces a new video file: reframed to vertical, subtitled, with a hook overlay, that you can post on TikTok, Instagram Reels or as a YouTube Short in its own right. One is a pointer, the other is an asset.
Can you convert YouTube clips to Shorts automatically?
Yes, that is the default path. The reframing uses MediaPipe face tracking with a YOLOv8 fallback, so a talking-head video becomes a centred vertical clip and a two-person interview can be stacked in a split layout. Subtitles are generated from a word-level transcript and burned in. If the YouTube video is in one language and your audience is in another, ElevenLabs dubbing translates the audio into 30+ languages and the subtitles are regenerated in the target language.
Whose videos can you clip?
Your own, or those you have permission to clip. Re-uploading other creators' content as Shorts is a copyright problem and a platform-policy problem regardless of which tool cut it. ShortsAI asks you to confirm rights at upload for that reason, and the source video is deleted from the server after processing.
What does it cost?
Nothing. ShortsAI is completely free with no paid tier, no watermark and no usage cap, at shortsai.app. You bring your own Google Gemini API key, whose free tier covers 1,500 requests a day; the site is supported by ads.
Common questions
- Does the YouTube clip maker need me to download the video first?
- No. Paste the link and the server fetches the source. Local files are supported as well if you already have the original.
- Can it clip a YouTube livestream recording?
- Yes, once the stream has ended and the recording is available on YouTube. Long recordings are where automatic moment detection saves the most time.
- Will the clips be vertical?
- By default, yes: 9:16 at 1080 by 1920, which is what YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok expect. 1:1 and 16:9 are available too.