Long Video to Shorts: Clips, Hooks, Vertical Framing
Turn one long video transcript into 3-7 standalone vertical Shorts with exact cuts, usable hooks, captions, 9:16 crops, and a posting week.
Before & after
Same prompt, same agent — the only difference is the skill.
YouTube videos do have Short-worthy moments in them. The challenge is finding them—you'd need to watch through and spot the most engaging 60-second clips. You could look for moments where you make a strong point, tell a quick story, or make a bold claim. Do you have a transcript I could scan, or would you describe the main topics in your video? I can help you brainstorm what might work as Shorts.
SHORTS EXTRACTION: "5 Marketing Mistakes" CLIP 1 (3:12-4:08) - "Nobody tells you this" Timestamp: 3:12-4:08 (56 sec) Current hook: "The fifth mistake nobody talks about..." Rewritten hook (Shorts): "I lost 50k on THIS marketing mistake" Caption (word-by-word): "I lost\n50 thousand\non THIS\nmarketing\nmistake" Vertical framing: Lock on speaker face (center), show whiteboard behind (context) Platforms: YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Instagram Reels Publish: Monday 8am (high engagement time for this channel) CLIP 2 (7:45-8:32) - "The ROI trap" Timestamp: 7:45-8:32 (47 sec) Rewritten hook: "Why 90% of marketers quit" Caption: "This is why\nmost quit\nmarketing" Framing: B-roll of spreadsheet, then face reaction Note: Insert pause at 8:01 for caption read-time Publish: Wednesday 7pm CLIP 3 (11:18-12:05) - "The tactic" Timestamp: 11:18-12:05 (47 sec) Rewritten hook: "One tactic generated 400k in sales" Caption: "1 tactic\n400k sales" Framing: Show spreadsheet growth curve Publish: Friday 9am CLIP 4 (13:40-14:26) - "The mistake" CLIP 5 (14:26-15:00) - "The lesson" PUBLISH CALENDAR: One Short per weekday (5-day coverage)
About this skill
Your long video has great moments in it, but the clips you pull keep getting swiped away. They open with "so anyway," they depend on something said ten minutes earlier, or the center crop cuts off your guest and your screen share. This skill turns a transcript into Shorts that make sense to a stranger in the first two seconds and still look right in 9:16.
What it does
- Finds moments that stand on their own and gives exact in and out points. If your transcript has no timestamps, it marks cuts by quoting the first and last words.
- Runs a cold-viewer test on every clip. Clips that open with a pronoun, end before the payoff, or need a visual the crop removes get fixed or dropped.
- Writes hooks you can actually make: reordering a cold open, trimming in, adding on-screen text, or a labeled pickup line you would re-record. It never puts words in your mouth that you didn't say.
- Plans the vertical framing for how you shot it: talking head, two-person interview, or screen share. It covers safe zones and warns when cropping 1080p footage will look soft.
- Writes caption styling, fixes for transcript errors, and per-platform post copy for Shorts, Reels, and TikTok.
- Builds a weekly posting order and lists the moments it rejected, with the reason for each.
What you get
A ranked clip sheet. Each clip has its cut points, hook method and wording, why it stands alone, crop notes, caption notes, and post copy. A schedule and a dropped-moments list follow.
Best for
YouTubers, podcasters, and agencies who publish long interviews, tutorials, or talking-head videos and want a week of Shorts from each upload without re-watching the whole thing.
SKILL.md preview
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name: long-video-to-shorts
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