Very Big Clips for YouTubers

Turn your back-catalog into the Shorts engine YouTube wants you to run. Highlight the lines that landed, render as 9:16, publish to your channel — without hiring an editor or buying CapCut Pro.

Just starting out? For NewTubers · First 1,000 subscribers · Grow a small channel

The problem

YouTube wants you to post Shorts. Making them is a second full-time job.

Since 2024 the algorithm has been rewriting which long-form channels grow. Channels that publish Shorts feed the recommendation surfaces that route audiences back to their hero videos. Channels that don't post Shorts watch their reach plateau. Every YouTuber sees the dashboard and knows the answer is "ship more Shorts" — but actually doing it means a 30-minute editor session per clip, every clip, forever.

Very Big Clips kills the editor session. You read the transcript of a long-form video you already published, drag across the moment that landed in the comments, and a finished 9:16 Short with captions comes out the other end. The marginal cost of the next Short drops from "an evening" to "five minutes." That's the difference between Shorts being something you'll do later and Shorts being the post-production step on every long-form upload.

How it works

From hero video to 6 Shorts in one sitting

  1. 1

    Pull a video from your back-catalog

    Connect Google Drive or upload an MP4. Anything 5+ minutes long with multiple self-contained ideas is good source material — a 20-minute essay, a 60-minute interview, a livestream VOD. Older videos work as well as new ones; YouTube doesn't penalize Shorts that draw from your existing library.

  2. 2

    Find the moments that landed

    Skim the AI transcript and highlight the passages that performed — in comments, in chapter timestamps, in retention graphs. The strongest Shorts come from moments your audience already responded to. The transcript shows you those exact spots without scrubbing.

  3. 3

    Render as 9:16 with auto-captions

    Pick a caption template — bold, neon glow, kinetic word, or your saved style. Very Big Clips renders the clip vertical with face-tracking crop and burned-in captions. Output is a YouTube-spec MP4 ready to publish.

  4. 4

    Publish to your channel

    On Creator and Pro plans, push directly to your YouTube channel from the editor. Schedule for off-peak posting if your audience watches at predictable times. Free and Starter plans get the same render — just with a download-and-upload step instead of one-click publishing.

Why YouTubers in particular

Built for the long-form-to-Shorts flywheel

Direct YouTube publishing

Your YouTube channel is connected via OAuth on Creator and Pro. Shorts post under your channel name, count toward your watch time, and show up in YouTube Studio analytics like any other upload — no third-party intermediary.

Multi-channel from one workspace

Connect every channel you own (main channel, second channel, brand accounts). Pick which channel to publish to from a dropdown. Channel switching takes one click instead of signing in and out of YouTube Studio.

Schedule around your audience

Pro plan supports scheduled publishing. Batch a week of Shorts on Monday, schedule them across the week's peak windows, then go work on the next long-form video. The Shorts ship without you.

FAQ

YouTuber questions, answered

What length of source video makes the best Shorts?

Anything from 8 minutes to 4 hours. The sweet spot is the 20–60 minute range — long enough to contain five to ten quotable moments, short enough that you can read the transcript without losing patience. Live streams, podcast episodes, talking-head essays, and tutorials all repurpose well. Cinematic vlogs and scripted documentaries are harder because the moments depend on context that gets lost in a 60-second slice.

Will the Shorts be attributed to my channel?

Yes. Direct publishing connects to your YouTube channel via the standard YouTube Data API. Shorts post under your channel, count toward your channel watch time, and feed your subscriber and analytics dashboards exactly as if you uploaded them through YouTube Studio.

Can I publish to multiple channels?

Yes. Connect each channel once via the channel picker — the workspace stores a separate refresh token per channel. When you go to publish, pick which channel from a dropdown. Brand accounts that own multiple channels are handled the same way.

Does it work with my existing CapCut or Premiere workflow?

Yes — Very Big Clips replaces the repurposing layer, not the original edit. Most YouTubers keep Premiere or DaVinci for their main long-form videos and use Very Big Clips for the steady drip of Shorts. The two workflows do not overlap.

How fast can I batch a week of Shorts?

From upload to a batch of finished Shorts, plan for 30 to 45 minutes per source video. Most of that time is reading the transcript and choosing clips. The actual rendering runs in parallel on Cloud Run and is usually ready in five to ten minutes total.

Also built for

Other workflows we power

Make Shorts the same day you ship long-form

Upload one hero video. Get six branded Shorts ready to schedule across the week.

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