Clips from your own footage

Clipping turns your own long videos — a podcast, a talk, an interview, a vlog — into vertical clips for Shorts, Reels and TikTok. You upload the footage and confirm you have the rights to it; ChannelForge transcribes it, finds its best moments, frames each one to 9:16 following the speaker, captions it in the channel's style, checks it, and posts it on the channel's schedule like an episode.

What it does#

How moments are found#

The transcript is read sentence by sentence, and moments are proposed as ranges of whole sentences — never cut inside a word or a sentence — each 20 to 89 seconds long. Each moment is scored out of 100: how strong it is as a story counts most, then its first two seconds, its length, its pace and what there is to see. Overlapping moments give way to the best of them; a moment that overlaps one already made, queued or set aside, or that repeats a clip the channel already has, is left out. Each moment comes with its title, description, hashtags, Facebook line and the words to highlight in its captions — in the channel's language.

How a clip is made#

On a GPU box, each clip is:

• framed for 9:16 — following the speaker or the main subject smoothly, shot by shot; showing the whole picture over a blurred fill of itself when two people sit too far apart; and fitting vertical footage whole;
• captioned word by word in the channel's caption style and accent colour, inside the safe area;
• branded with the channel's mark in the corner, and an end card if the channel wants one;
• brought to one even loudness, with high-dynamic-range footage tone-mapped;
• checked: the picture, the sound, the captions' safe area, a hook in its first two seconds, no cut mid-sentence, its texts, and an independent critic.

A clip that passes lands in the library, ready. One the checks hold is kept for you to watch — held, and not charged; releasing it charges what it cost to make, as for a held episode. A clip is at most 89 seconds, so the same video goes to every platform.

How to use it#

Upload footage#

1. Open the channel and find Clips from your footage; press Open the footage library →.
2. Under Upload footage, choose Your footage: an mp4, mov or webm file with its sound, within your plan's size and length for one file (shown under the field).
3. Tick I own this footage or have the rights to use it. Your confirmation is kept with the footage — who, when, and these exact words.
4. Press Upload. A bar shows how much is sent and about how long is left; Pause and Resume as you need, or Cancel the upload.

If the page is closed mid-upload, it says "An upload was interrupted": choose the same file again and it carries on from where it stopped. When the upload ends, the file is checked (free), usually in a minute or two.

Transcribe it and find the moments#

1. Open the footage from Your footage.
2. Under 1 · Transcribe, keep Then find the best moments by itself ticked to do both in one go, check the two prices and press Transcribe.
3. When it is done, 2 · Find the best moments lists them — or press Find the moments yourself. Find them again replaces the suggestions; what was made or set aside stays.

Transcript (.srt) at the top of the page downloads every word with its time, as subtitles.

Make clips#

The moments lists the suggestions, best first, each with its score ("excellent", "strong", "fair" or "weak"), its title, its hook, why it was picked and What is said.

1. Tick the moments to make — or press the best 1, the best 3 or the best 5 to choose quickly. set aside removes a moment from the list; bring back restores it.
2. Press Make N clips. The price per clip is shown with the button.

Each clip appears under Clips made from it and in Episodes with a clip badge. Its page has From your footage: the footage, the span it was cut from, why that moment, how it was framed and what is said in it.

Let it run by itself#

In Clipping settings, tick Autopilot: make the best clips of every upload by itself: each new upload is then transcribed, its moments found and its best ones made into clips — every step at the price shown, within your spending caps.

Settings#

Clipping settings are on the footage library page, per channel. Editors, admins and owners change them; saved settings apply to the next steps, and clips already made keep theirs.

Posting clips#

With Ready clips take the channel's posting slots on, a ready clip posts on the channel's slots like an episode, oldest first, with the same human-like timing. If the channel's schedule is off, clips wait in the library until you turn it on or post them yourself; if the channel asks for approval, each clip waits in Approvals first. Ready clips count towards the channel's Keep ready stock.

Credits and plans#

• Checking a file is free.
• Transcription is charged what Google bills for the footage's length, at your plan's rate — and never more than the "At most N credits" shown before it starts. A piece already transcribed is never paid for twice.
• Finding the moments costs a few credits for each half hour of footage, a little more with the visual look.
• A clip reserves a small fixed amount and is charged what it really cost. A clip the checks hold is not charged.
• Failures on our side are not charged.

The typical figures per plan are in the pricing page's "What things cost" table: "A clip from your footage" and "An hour of transcription".

Plan limits#

Own-footage clipping is on Creator and above. Each plan sets:

• the size and the length of one file;
• the hours of footage transcribed a calendar month;
• the clips made a calendar month.

The footage library shows this month's use against them — Transcribed this month, Clips this month and Footage kept — and they renew on the 1st of each month (UTC). Footage you keep counts against your plan's storage, together with your product pictures and voice recordings. See Pricing.

Limits and good to know#

• The file is kept 30 days after its upload, then deleted. Its transcript, its moments and the clips made from it stay; the footage then shows file deleted, and new clips need the file uploaded again.
• Delete this footage (a two-press button) removes the file and its transcript at once; the clips made from it stay in your library.
• The channel's language: footage is transcribed in the language of its channel. Where speech-to-text does not cover that language yet, the transcription is refused before anything is charged.
• A moment is never made twice; cancelling a clip before it is made puts the moment back among the suggestions.
• Your footage is never compared with other people's: the originality guard is for generated episodes.
• Privacy: the footage's sound goes to Google's speech-to-text; with the visual look on, a few frames of each moment go to Google's Gemini. See the privacy policy.

Troubleshooting#

• "Upload an mp4, mov or webm video." Convert the file, or export it again in one of these.
• "Your plan takes files up to … — this one is …" Trim the recording or split it in two, or upgrade.
• "Your plan transcribes … of footage a month and … is used." It renews on the 1st (UTC), or upgrade.
• "This footage cannot be clipped." The check found no usable video or sound; the page says why.
• "Its file was deleted." Thirty days have passed since the upload: upload it again to make new clips.

Related#

• Caption styles and endings that loop — how a clip's captions look
• Episodes — clips sit in the library beside them
• Schedules and autopilot — the slots clips post on
• Approvals on your phone — approving clips before they post
• Privacy at a glance — what happens to your footage