Tools · Issue #17 ·
OpusClip, the AI clipper that turns one long video into a stack of short, captioned clips ready for TikTok, Reels and Shorts
In one line: OpusClip watches a long video (a podcast, a webinar, a Zoom talk, a YouTube upload), picks out the moments most likely to work as shorts, reframes them vertical and adds animated captions, with a free plan of 60 credits a month (one credit is one minute of the video you bring in).
What it is
OpusClip is a web app (with iOS and Android apps) that does the most tedious part of posting video: finding the good 30 to 90 seconds inside an hour of footage. You paste a link or upload a file, and its AI cuts the video into short clips, reframes them to 9:16 so the speaker stays in the shot, and adds animated captions with emoji and highlighted keywords. OpusClip's help center says the number of clips depends on length: a 10 to 30 minute video usually gives 5 to 21 clips, and an hour gives 23 to 32. Paid plans rank each clip with a Virality Score from 0 to 99, based on OpusClip's read of the hook, flow, value and how well it matches current trends, and sort the best ones to the top. There are two clipping models: the standard one, and ClipAnything, which also uses visual and audio cues, so it works on videos with little or no talking, and lets you ask for specific moments in plain English (OpusClip's example: "Find all the touchdowns"). On top of that come an editor for trimming, captions and layouts, filler and silence removal, AI B-roll, auto-posting and scheduling to YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Instagram and more, and export to Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve on Pro. It takes links from YouTube on every plan, and paid plans add sources like Google Drive, Zoom, Vimeo, Riverside and Loom. Videos can be up to 10 hours long, and it handles 25+ languages (most besides English, German, Spanish, French and Portuguese are marked beta).
Who it's for
Anyone sitting on long videos that nobody watches all the way through: podcasters, YouTubers, coaches and teachers with recorded lessons, people who give webinars or talks, churches posting sermons, real estate agents and small businesses trying to show up on short-form feeds without hiring an editor. If you already record long-form and keep meaning to "cut some clips," this is that job done in minutes. It's less useful if you don't have long footage to start with (it clips, it doesn't film for you), if you want precise frame-by-frame control (that's what Descript, Premiere or Resolve are for, and Pro can hand clips off to the last two), or if you need clean, watermark-free clips without paying (see the catch).
Try this today
Go to opus.pro and sign up (OpusClip says no card is needed in the countries it fully serves). New accounts start on a 7-day Pro trial, which turns into the Free plan on its own, so use your first week to test it properly. Pick a video you already have on YouTube, ideally 10 to 30 minutes of someone talking: a podcast episode, a talk, a product demo. Paste the link, pick a caption style, and click to get clips. Remember the meter: a 30-minute video uses 30 credits, so start with something short or use the processing timeframe slider to clip only the part you care about. When the results come back, watch the top three, not all of them, and fix anything off in the editor: a caption typo, a clip that starts a beat too late. Tip: if your video has little dialogue (a game, a sports clip, a cooking video), switch the model to ClipAnything and type the moment you want, like "the funniest reactions."
The catch
The free plan is for trying it, not for publishing. Free clips carry an OpusClip watermark, are rendered up to 1080p in 9:16 only, can't be edited, and stop being exportable after 3 days; you also don't get the Virality Score. The 7-day trial is better, but its exports are watermarked too, and trial users can't post or schedule directly to social media, add music, bulk download or get a credit refund on a bad run. Credits go fast: you pay for every minute of the original video you process, not for the clips you keep, so one hour-long podcast uses all 60 free credits for the month. (Videos under a minute round up to 1 credit; partial minutes round down.) Posting to X costs 3 credits per clip per account. Deleting a project doesn't give credits back; only Pro users can refund a project, within 14 days of upload and only if they haven't downloaded any clips from it. Starter projects and storage expire after about a month (29 days for storage, 30 for exports), and if you cancel a paid plan your projects become inaccessible after 3 days. And the AI picks are a starting point: you still need to watch them before posting under your name.
Pricing
Free: $0, 60 credits a month (60 minutes of video), YouTube links and local uploads, auto reframe, AI captions with emoji and keyword highlights, up to 1080p, watermark, no editing, and clips exportable for 3 days. Starter: $15 a month (monthly billing only), 150 credits a month, Virality Score, captions in 20+ languages, the editor, filler and silence removal, 1 brand template, auto-posting to YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram Reels, and no watermark. Pro: $29 a month, or $14.50 a month billed yearly ($174 a year), 300 credits a month per pack (yearly plans get the full 3,600 up front, valid for 12 months), monthly credits roll over for 2 months, a team workspace with 2 seats (up to 4 with a second pack), 16:9, 1:1 and 9:16 clips, AI B-roll, 10+ import sources, a social scheduler, export to Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve, 100GB of storage, speech enhancement, video dubbing and limited API access. You can add packs or top up credits on Pro. Business is custom-priced. Downgrades take effect at the end of your billing cycle.
Pricing checked on opus.pro/pricing and the OpusClip help center (plans, how credits work, free trial limits, pause or cancel a free trial, payments, video length and sources, refunding a project, Virality Score and clip count articles) on Oct 31, 2026.