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YouTubeclip maker

YouTube clip maker: turn YouTube videos into clips

Paste a link to one of your YouTube videos and get back the moments worth posting as Shorts, Reels and TikToks, each framed vertically and captioned. Or upload the original file, for the sharpest picture.

Your first 2 videos are free, up to 1 hour each. No credit card required.

Can you make clips from a YouTube video?

Yes. Paste a link to a public YouTube video you own or may use, or upload the file. Snipri reads the transcript for moments that make sense on their own, reframes them to 9:16 and captions every word. Links are fetched at up to 720p and up to 1 hour long, and an upload keeps its own resolution.

Recordings can be in any of 25 languages, chosen when you add the video or detected automatically.

A physics lecture its author published on YouTube, as Snipri reframed it: the lecturer moves along the board and the window follows, so the vertical clip keeps them in frame. On the left, the lime frames are what the clip shows and each face Snipri tracks carries its share of the frame's height; on the right plays the clip it rendered.

Recording: “Lecture 6 part 3” by Physics 7B UC Davis, from the YouTube UGC dataset, under CC BY 4.0, cut, without sound and with Snipri’s framing drawn over it. The logo on a laptop's lid was painted out before Snipri reframed it. The clip is Snipri’s render, scaled down and not retouched.

  • 15 to 60s

    Clip length by default, or choose 10 to 30s, 30 to 60s, 60 to 90s or 90s to 3 min

  • Up to 10

    Clips from each job

  • 1080×1920

    Vertical by default; square or landscape in the editor

  • Editable

    Word-level captions, restyled any time after export

  • 43 min

    Usual wait for your clips

  • 2 videos

    Free to start, up to 1 hour each, no credit card

How to make clips from a YouTube video

Three steps, and no editing skills needed.

  1. A few clicks

    Paste the link or upload the file

    Paste a link to one public YouTube video or Short, or upload the file for full resolution, or pick it from Dropbox or Google Drive.

  2. About 43 minutes

    Snipri finds the moments

    The transcript is read for moments that make sense without the rest of the video. Weak ones are dropped, not padded in.

  3. Your call

    Review and post

    Check each clip, rewrite its title card if you like, and download it for Shorts, Reels or TikTok.

Clips from “Fireside Chat: Godot's Next Milestones” by Ben Vehling, Matt Ellis and Rémi Verschelde, GodotFest 2025 (media.ccc.de, CC BY 4.0), cut, reframed and captioned by Snipri, with the logos on the speakers' shirts painted out.

Why use Snipri as a YouTube clip maker

Widest 9:16 crop of a 16:9 frame, in source pixels, for a clip 1,080 wide

YouTube videos at the resolution you have

Video pages are fetched at up to 720p. An uploaded file keeps its own resolution, for a sharper crop.

Vertical clip of a young man in a leather jacket on a canal bridge, under the title card He tells her the world has changed
Title card on a clip

A scene from “Tears of Steel” by Blender Foundation, CC BY 3.0, reframed by Snipri under a title written for this example.

A hook title card on every YouTube clip

Each clip opens on a title you can rewrite and hold on screen for 1 to 10 seconds.

Example scores. The first three must reach 7.

Vertical clip of the same young man in close-up, captioned THE WORLD'S CHANGED, with the spoken word in green

A scene from “Tears of Steel” by Blender Foundation, CC BY 3.0, cut for this example, reframed and captioned by Snipri.

Clips from your YouTube video, scored

Each clip shows its scores. Hook, payoff and standalone sense must each reach 7/10.

AI clipping

Moments that work without the rest of the video.

The transcript of your YouTube video is read for moments a viewer would follow on their own, up to 10 of them, each with the reason it was kept.

How Snipri picks each clip
A scene from “Tears of Steel” by Blender Foundation, CC BY 3.0, cut for this example, reframed and captioned by Snipri under a title written for it.

Auto reframe

YouTube's 16:9 made 9:16.

The crop follows the person on camera from shot to shot, and two or three people sharing a shot can get a pane each.

How auto reframe works
The classroom lecture in the video above, by Physics 7B UC Davis under CC BY 4.0, as Snipri reframed it, with a logo on a laptop painted out.

Auto captions

Captions for a feed scrolled on mute.

Every word is timed from the video's transcript and captioned in the language it was spoken in, one of the 25 Snipri transcribes.

How animated captions work
A scene from “Tears of Steel” by Blender Foundation, CC BY 3.0, cut for this example and burned by Snipri's renderer in the Badge look.

Make each clip yours before it posts.

Rewrite the title card, trim or extend a clip, and add your channel's handle as a text layer.

Restyle the captions, add a hook title, B-roll or music, and save it again. Edits never use another video.

Up to 10 extra seconds before and after each moment, from the part of the video Snipri processed.

How the clip editor works

Press a word to cut it from the clip.

1.6 seconds

4 words, nothing cut yet

Sample clip: “The world’s changed, Celia”

A scene from “Tears of Steel” by Blender Foundation, CC BY 3.0, cut for this example and reframed by Snipri. Its words are the film's own captions.

What Snipri kept from a 53-minute lecture

A real job: this lecture, run through Snipri with Academic as the kind of video and every other setting at its default. Snipri's AI scored 38 moments in it, and 16 of them cleared the bar: hook, payoff and standalone sense each reached 7 out of 10. It kept the ten strongest, the most clips one job returns. They are listed strongest first, in the order My clips gives them. The four strongest of those that missed it are under the clips, with the score that kept each one out.

The recording
52:54
Moments scored
38
Clips kept
10

Recording: “Reverse Engineering Life: A teardown of the DNA source code of a whole bacterium” by bert hubert, WHY2025 (CC BY 4.0, via media.ccc.de), processed in Snipri.

  1. 7:43 to 8:34, 50 seconds

    Booting a Virus From an 800-Byte File

    Hook
    8
    Payoff
    8
    Standalone sense
    8
    Arc
    8
    Quotability
    8

    Gives a concrete size, then the result: upload the file to a DNA printer, put it in a human cell, and it generates the virus from scratch, from a floppy. The claim, mechanism and punchline stay together.

  2. 41:00 to 41:58, 58 seconds

    The Random DNA That Was an Immune System

    Hook
    7
    Payoff
    9
    Standalone sense
    7
    Arc
    9
    Quotability
    8

    A discovery arc: 20 years of dismissing the spacers as random, then someone recognizes them as viral DNA, revealing a bacterial immune system stored as a virus signature file. The reveal and the explanation both land inside the clip.

  3. 5:12 to 6:07, 54 seconds

    All Life Runs the Same DNA for 4 Billion Years

    Hook
    8
    Payoff
    8
    Standalone sense
    8
    Arc
    7
    Quotability
    8

    Starts with the surprising universality of DNA, shows consequences (viruses inject it, bacteria make our insulin), and lands on the contrast with unreadable ten-year-old DVDs. It is complete and quotable.

  4. 39:33 to 40:04, 31 seconds

    When Medical Software Stops at One Bad Line

    Hook
    8
    Payoff
    8
    Standalone sense
    7
    Arc
    7
    Quotability
    8

    A specific, alarming bug explained in one breath, then the punch: your disease might be beyond the malformed line, and it took nine years to close the pull request. The stakes make it work alone.

  5. 2:51 to 3:18, 27 seconds

    Am I a Scientist or Just Fooling People?

    Hook
    8
    Payoff
    7
    Standalone sense
    8
    Arc
    7
    Quotability
    8

    A self-deprecating credential check that builds from a blunt question to a punchline: maybe I'm not a scientist, but I fool a lot of people. It is self-contained and lands on a quotable line.

  6. 3:34 to 4:08, 34 seconds

    DNA Storage Outlasts Any SSD by 200,000 Years

    Hook
    7
    Payoff
    8
    Standalone sense
    8
    Arc
    7
    Quotability
    8

    A single comparison: human storage versus DNA in density and durability, ending on the 200,000-year versus two-year SSD contrast. The numbers carry the payoff with no outside context needed.

  7. 9:09 to 9:45, 36 seconds

    Why a $30 Million Synthetic Bacterium Failed

    Hook
    7
    Payoff
    8
    Standalone sense
    7
    Arc
    8
    Quotability
    8

    Sets an expectation, breaks it ($30 million, nothing worked), then explains the cause: an unknown antiviral mechanism chopped up the new DNA. It ends on the line that truly knowing something means bootstrapping it.

  8. 19:12 to 19:51, 39 seconds

    Why DNA Files Are Four Times Too Large

    Hook
    7
    Payoff
    8
    Standalone sense
    8
    Arc
    8
    Quotability
    7

    Poses a concrete inefficiency, then resolves it with the real reason: the N for unknown bases cannot fit in two bits. Clear question, explanation and wry ending.

  9. 33:37 to 34:21, 44 seconds

    Biologists Keep Inventing Terrible File Formats

    Hook
    8
    Payoff
    7
    Standalone sense
    7
    Arc
    7
    Quotability
    8

    A programmer's rant with a concrete case: a file format mixing space, tab and semicolon delimiters, then one-based addressing as the original sin that causes mountains of bugs. It has a clear build and a sharp ending.

  10. 43:16 to 44:13, 57 seconds

    Why Bacterial Antivirus Doesn't Self-Destruct

    Hook
    7
    Payoff
    8
    Standalone sense
    7
    Arc
    8
    Quotability
    7

    A clean question and answer: using the malware-signature analogy, the bacteria only match when an extra implicit sequence follows, so their own signature file is spared. The paradox, mechanism and conclusion are all in the span.

The closest calls, left out

  • 9:46 to 10:40, 54 seconds

    The One Missing Letter That Bricked a Genome

    Hook
    7
    Payoff
    8
    Standalone sense
    6
    Arc
    8
    Quotability
    7

    Left out on its standalone sense: 6, under the bar of 7.

    A debugging story with a clean resolution: one missed letter shifts every instruction because DNA has no addressing, and the fix brings the cell to life. It starts mid-story, so it relies on the prior setup of an emptied bacterium.

  • 24:08 to 25:00, 52 seconds

    Biologists Say It's Logical, Can't Explain It

    Hook
    6
    Payoff
    8
    Standalone sense
    6
    Arc
    7
    Quotability
    8

    Left out on its hook and standalone sense: 6 each, under the bar of 7.

    Extends the parity mystery to longer strings, then delivers the sharp payoff of asking biologists why. They say it's completely logical, then can't explain it.

  • 15:22 to 16:17, 55 seconds

    The Fish With 33 GB of DNA Nobody Can Explain

    Hook
    7
    Payoff
    7
    Standalone sense
    6
    Arc
    7
    Quotability
    7

    Left out on its standalone sense: 6, under the bar of 7.

    Escalates from 14 MB for a plant to 750 MB for a human to a fish with 33 GB, and admits we don't know why. The escalation gives it shape, though it leans on slide references like this human and this fish.

  • 32:06 to 32:54, 47 seconds

    A Four-Billion-Year-Old Lookup Table

    Hook
    7
    Payoff
    7
    Standalone sense
    6
    Arc
    6
    Quotability
    8

    Left out on its standalone sense: 6, under the bar of 7.

    Presents the genetic code as a table that has not changed in four billion years, with only tiny variations, and calls it a super Rosetta Stone. The opening joke and codon concept assume a little biology.

Frequently asked questions

Which YouTube links work?

Links to one public YouTube video or Short, up to 1 hour long. Playlists and channels are not supported, and neither are private or members-only videos or streams that are still live. Only import videos you own or have permission to use.

Why upload the file instead of pasting the link?

A link is fetched at up to 720p, while an upload keeps its own resolution, and a vertical crop keeps about a third of a wide frame's width. An upload can also run longer: up to 1 hour on Free, 2 hours on Starter and 3 hours on Pro and Scale.

Can Snipri post the clips to YouTube for me?

No. You download the clips and post them yourself, so nothing is published from your account.

What did Snipri keep from a real lecture?

From the 53-minute lecture on this page, “Reverse Engineering Life: A teardown of the DNA source code of a whole bacterium” (WHY2025), Snipri's AI scored 38 moments and kept ten, from 27 to 58 seconds long: the strongest of the 16 that cleared the bar, since one job returns at most ten. Each one comes with its five scores and the reason it was kept.

Why would a strong moment be left out?

Because hook, payoff and standalone sense are each a gate of their own. In this lecture, “The One Missing Letter That Bricked a Genome” scored 8 for payoff, but its standalone sense scored 6, under the bar of 7, so it was left out. A high score on one never makes up for a miss on another. And when more moments clear the bar than one job returns, as 16 did here, only the ten strongest become clips.

Is Snipri free?

You start with 2 free videos of up to 1 hour each, once, with a watermark and no credit card. Paid plans start at $29.90/month for 10 videos a month, each up to 2 hours, without a watermark. A video counts once for each hour of it, rounded up, and only when it gives you at least one clip.

More ways to use Snipri

How each part of Snipri works

Try it on your own recording.

Upload one of your YouTube videos and judge the clips yourself. Your first 2 videos are free, up to 1 hour each, no credit card needed.