How to turn a long video into shorts

What makes a good short?

A short is not a trimmed-down long video. It is a complete piece that happens to come from one:

• It stands alone. Someone who never saw the long video understands it from the first second.
• It is one idea. A single point, story or answer, not a summary.
• It hooks fast. The first line gives a reason to keep watching, inside the first three seconds.
• It pays off. The end delivers what the start promised.
• It reads with the sound off. Captions carry the words for anyone scrolling in silence.

How do you find the moments worth clipping?

Look for a complete thought with a strong first line: a story with a turn, a surprising number, a clear opinion, a question answered, a laugh. Skip anything that leans on "as I said earlier".

Sharpy reads a long recording the way an editor would. It labels every part by what it does (a hook, a topic being named, an explanation, a close, an aside) and finds the spans that work as a whole. Give it a short you like as a reference, and it looks for the moments that fit that shape.

How do you reframe a 16:9 video to 9:16?

Not with a centre crop. A vertical frame keeps about a third of the width of a widescreen one, and the person speaking is rarely in the middle third the whole time.

Track the subject instead. Sharpy centres the crop on the speaker's face and follows it, smoothed so the frame never lurches. When there is no face, it uses what the eye is drawn to: in one test shot, the crop kept 79% of a tower in frame, against 39% for a plain centre crop.

Where should captions go on a short?

Clear of the buttons. Reels, Shorts and TikTok lay their own captions, icons and buttons over the bottom and right of the frame, and words underneath them are lost.

On a 1080 × 1920 short, Sharpy keeps words out of the bottom 450 pixels, where Reels puts its interface, and the right 164 pixels, where TikTok puts its buttons, and it warns you about any that stray. It places the captions just below the speaker's chin when they fit above that strip, and above the brow when they do not. Captions on your Mac covers the styles.

How do you turn a long video into shorts with Sharpy?

1. Add the long recording. A podcast, a livestream, a talk or a YouTube video.
2. Give it a reference. A short you like, as a file or a link. Sharpy studies its structure, pacing and where its captions sit.
3. Choose the shape. 9:16 for Reels, Shorts and TikTok; 1:1 or 4:5 for feeds. Every shape can come from the same recording.
4. Let it find and plan the shorts. Sharpy finds the moments that fit, by meaning, and plans each short with its hook in the first three seconds.
5. Let it cut, reframe and caption. It cuts the filler and dead air, follows the speaker's face, adds karaoke captions clear of the buttons, and adds licensed music if you want it.
6. Check and export. It renders each short, checks the captions against the safe areas, and lists every decision with its reason.

The cleanup works the same way as on the long video; removing filler words and dead air explains the rules.