How do you turn a podcast into shorts?

How many clips to cut from one episode

Count complete ideas, not minutes. Skim the episode and list every moment where a question gets a full answer, a story reaches its ending or a claim comes with its example. That list is your number. This is editorial judgement, not a platform rule: a lively interview often holds more self-contained answers than a solo episode that builds one argument from start to finish.

Length is rarely the limit. Even 20 clips of 90 seconds fit in a one-hour episode without reusing footage, as the guide on how many shorts a one-hour video holds works out. What runs out first is moments that make sense to someone who never heard the episode.

Plan where each clip goes before you cut. Spotify takes one Clip per episode, so one moment goes there; the others can be spread over Shorts, TikTok and Reels in the days after the episode comes out.

Where to cut a podcast clip

Start on the first word of the claim or the question the clip is about, and end just after the sentence that closes the answer, before the next topic begins. Leave out the welcome, the guest introduction and the sponsor read. The guide on where to cut a clip covers the general rules; a conversation adds four of its own.

• Cross-talk: when two people talk over each other, end before the overlap or keep it whole. A clip that stops inside an overlap ends on two half-sentences.
• The question: if the answer only makes sense with the question, start on the host's question; if it stands alone, let the title carry the question. AI clip makers may not keep both: shortshort, for one, does not pair a question with its answer, so watch the first seconds of each clip.
• Music: keep intro and outro music, stings and licensed songs out of the clip. YouTube Help, read October 16, 2026, says a Short over one minute with an active copyright claim of any type is blocked globally, and Spotify asks that a Clip contain no copyrighted music unless you own the rights.
• Sponsor reads and calls to action: Spotify's Clips content policy says a Clip should not be used to sell anything or be overly promotional, and asks you not to direct listeners to websites or to ask for follows or likes on social media.

Settings for YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Instagram Reels and Spotify Clips

The four destinations agree on shape and disagree on length. A vertical 9:16 MP4 at 1080 x 1920 and 30 fps meets every shape and size figure in the table; what changes from one platform to the next is how long a clip may run and what it may contain. Every figure comes from the platform's own help pages, read on October 16, 2026.

Spotify accepts 15 to 90 seconds. TikTok's Creator Rewards Program counts only original videos over 1 minute long. YouTube blocks Shorts over one minute that carry an active copyright claim. A clip of 61 to 90 seconds with no claimed music fits all three rules. That is our arithmetic, not a platform recommendation: none of these pages names an ideal length, and Spotify only advises keeping Clips short.

Spotify Clips are not shown everywhere. Spotify's Clips content policy lists the markets where listeners can view Clips on mobile devices: Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Albania, Ireland, Kosovo, Malta, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Samoa. Without a Clip, Spotify still generates square episode previews of up to 60 seconds, as long as previews are enabled in your settings.

Two-person and multi-camera shots: who stays in the frame

A vertical crop keeps a narrow slice of a horizontal recording: a full-height 9:16 window keeps 31.6% of the width of a 16:9 frame. In a wide shot of a host and a guest side by side, only one of them fits, so a person or a tool has to choose.

shortshort makes that choice by face, not by voice. Its tracker finds the faces in each shot and places the 9:16 crop on the most visible one, ranked on the detector's confidence and the size of the face. It does not tell who is speaking. In a steady two-shot where both faces stay visible, the crop usually moves to the other face only once that face has been the most visible for 1.5 seconds, and it cuts there rather than panning. So the crop can stay on the listener while the other person talks.

When both faces are about the same size and both under 20% of the frame height, no face is picked for that moment and the crop holds where it was. The analysis is told to keep the full picture only for slides, charts, documents and on-screen text, never for people talking side by side, so a two-shot is cropped to one face. There are no manual framing controls: if the crop lands on the wrong person, move the clip's bounds or pick another passage.

Multi-camera recordings are easier. If the episode was edited to cut to each person's camera, each shot holds one face, and the crop follows those cuts: at a camera change it jumps to the new framing instead of panning. The edit you already made decides who is on screen, so the edited episode makes a better source for vertical clips than the wide master shot. Remote recordings work the same way: a layout that shows one person at a time behaves like a multi-camera edit, and a side-by-side layout like a two-shot.

Captions for podcast clips

A podcast clip is mostly people talking, and a viewer who scrolls past has to read it. Spotify's own tips for Clips suggest including captions for viewers browsing without sound.

Pick one caption layer. TikTok generates captions automatically for videos you upload, and you can edit or remove them. YouTube publishes automatic captions on long-form videos and Shorts when they are available. If your clip already has captions burned into the picture, check the post after upload and remove the platform's copy if the words appear twice.

Proofread names. Guests' names, brands, places and jargon are where speech recognition slips, and YouTube's help page warns that automatic captions might misrepresent speech because of mispronunciations, accents, dialects or background noise. Two people talking over each other is another place to check, whatever tool made the captions.

In shortshort, captions are timed per word in four styles: Spotlight, the default, Impact, Karaoke and Minimal. Captions are in the language spoken in the video, never translated: each short's words are transcribed by OpenAI's whisper-1, which OpenAI says supports 98 languages, with accuracy that varies by language, so check the words before rendering. With captions on, 'Download all' puts each short in the ZIP twice, with and without captions, so the clean copy can go where you prefer the platform's own captions.

Pointing each clip back to the full episode

On YouTube, a Short can carry a Related Video link, shown below your channel handle in the Shorts player. It must point to a public or unlisted video from your channel, and the option needs advanced feature access. Shorts made with YouTube Studio's own Clips and Shorts tool get their source video added as the related video automatically, unless the Short is private, unlisted or made for kids.

The help page for that tool recommends keeping only full episodes in a podcast playlist, so leave the clips out of it. It also notes: "You won't be penalized for using your content in a video clip or Short." It does not say how such clips are ranked in the Shorts feed; YouTube's October 2026 note on original content is covered in a separate guide.

On Spotify, a Clip is attached to the episode itself in Spotify for Creators, for a scheduled or a published episode, and its content should be related to the episode and promote it. Spotify's Clips content policy also asks you not to recycle material that carries another site's watermark.

With shortshort

shortshort turns a recorded video episode into vertical shorts: upload the file (MP4, MOV or WebM, up to 2 GB) or paste the link of your own public or unlisted YouTube video, downloaded on our servers at up to 720p with its audio. An audio-only episode needs a video track first. The AI listens to the whole episode and returns exactly the number of shorts you ask for (up to 3 on the Free plan, 5 on Starter, 10 on Creator, 20 on the Studio plan), each aimed at a length you choose between 15 and 90 seconds and finishing within 25% of it; within one run, shorts never share footage. The AI picks passages that open and close on complete sentences, then checks the end of each short against the transcript; when an exact ending cannot be confirmed, the studio says so. The crop follows the face on screen, with automatic zooms between x1.0 and x1.6; it does not tell who is speaking, and there are no manual framing controls. Captions are timed per word, in four styles. For a Spotify Clip, set a target between 20 and 70 seconds so the short lands between 15 and 87.5 seconds, check the length again if you widen its bounds in the editor, and export it on a paid plan, because Spotify's Clips content policy asks for no watermarked content and Free exports carry a small shortshort.io badge near the top-left corner and a 1.5 s 'Made with shortshort.io' end card. An episode costs 1 credit per minute of source, whatever the number of shorts, and a new account gets 30 credits once, with no card. Your upload stays private until you export; exported shorts join the community with their source video by default, and any paid plan can keep them out. Shorts can be scheduled on a connected YouTube channel from the Publish page; publishing to TikTok is in early access, and you download Reels and Spotify Clips and upload them yourself.

Sources

The official pages this guide relies on, with the day each one was read.

• Clips - Spotify for Creators, checked 16 October 2026.
• Clips content policy - Spotify for Creators, checked 16 October 2026.
• Understand three-minute YouTube Shorts - YouTube Help, checked 16 October 2026.
• Video Clips & Shorts in YouTube Studio - YouTube Help, checked 16 October 2026.
• Add a related video to your YouTube Shorts - YouTube Help, checked 16 October 2026.
• Use automatic captioning - YouTube Help, checked 16 October 2026.
• Camera tools | TikTok Help Center (English), checked 16 October 2026.
• Accessibility for your videos | TikTok Help Center, checked 16 October 2026.
• Creator Rewards Program | TikTok Creator Academy (last updated September 2026), checked 16 October 2026.
• Record a reel on Instagram | Instagram Help Center, checked 16 October 2026.
• Reel size & aspect ratios on Instagram | Instagram Help Center, checked 16 October 2026.

Related

• How many shorts can you get from a one-hour video?How many vertical shorts to cut from a one-hour talk, podcast or course, how long each one should run, and what YouTube, TikTok and Instagram allow.
• Where should you cut a short clip out of a long talk?Cut clips from talks, podcasts and courses on complete sentences, not on a timer: where to start, where to end, and how much length to allow for the thought.
• How are word-by-word captions timed, and which caption style should I use?How word-by-word captions are timed from a transcript, how words are grouped on screen, and how to choose between four caption styles for vertical shorts.
• YouTube Studio's Video Clips tool or an AI clip maker: which should you use?YouTube removed viewer Clips in April 2026, but YouTube Studio now cuts Shorts from your own videos. What it does, and when an AI clip maker helps.
• Does YouTube's October 2026 originality update affect clips from your own videos?YouTube's October 1, 2026 Shorts update reduces reach for channels that re-upload others' videos. What it says, what it leaves out, and your own clips.
• Cut podcast episodes into clipsUpload a video podcast episode of up to 2 GB and get clips aimed at 15 to 90 seconds, cut on complete answers, on the face on screen, captioned word by word.
• A 9:16 or 4:5 crop that follows the face on screenEach short is cropped to 9:16 or 4:5 around the face on screen, tracked again for each format, with zooms between x1.0 and x1.6 and slides kept full-frame.
• Captions timed on every word, in four stylesEvery word of a short is timed on the audio in a second transcription pass, then shown in one of four styles: Spotlight, Impact, Karaoke or Minimal.

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