Video to shorts

Video → Shorts

Turn a long talking-head video into one or more polished vertical shorts (≤ 60s, 9:16, burned-in subtitles). The skill transcribes the source, auto-suggests the best moments, then cuts, crops, and subtitles a clip you approve.

The deliverable is a finished *-en.mp4 ready to upload by hand. No YouTube account, API key, or upload CLI needed.

When to use

• "Make shorts/reels/clips out of this podcast / interview / talk"
• "Find the best moments in this video and cut vertical clips"
• "Transcribe this and pull out quotable soundbites"
• Any long-form talking footage that needs to become short vertical content

Best for static, single- or two-person talking footage. Fast-cut montages, music videos, or heavy on-screen graphics need a human editor — flag that and stop.

One-time setup (cross-platform)

You need three tools: ffmpeg with libass (cut/crop/burn-in), Whisper (transcription), and optionally yt-dlp (only if the source is a URL).

ffmpeg — must include libass (for subtitle burn-in)

Check first: ffmpeg -version | grep -o libass. If it prints libass, you're done.

OS	Install
Linux	sudo apt install ffmpeg (Debian/Ubuntu builds include libass) — or brew install ffmpeg on Linuxbrew.
Windows (WSL2)	Inside Ubuntu-on-WSL: sudo apt install ffmpeg. Do everything from the WSL shell, not PowerShell.
macOS	⚠️ Default Homebrew ffmpeg omits libass — the subtitles filter fails with a cryptic "No option name near …". Install a libass static build to ~/.local/bin:

# macOS only — libass-enabled static ffmpeg
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
curl -L https://evermeet.cx/ffmpeg/getrelease/ffmpeg/zip -o /tmp/ff.zip
unzip -o /tmp/ff.zip -d ~/.local/bin/
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/ffmpeg
~/.local/bin/ffmpeg -version | grep -E "libass|libfreetype"   # both must appear

On macOS, use ~/.local/bin/ffmpeg for the burn-in step only; the system ffmpeg is fine for cut/crop.

Whisper — transcription

OS / hardware	Recommended	Install
macOS (Apple Silicon)	mlx-whisper (GPU via MLX, fastest)	pip install mlx-whisper
Linux + NVIDIA	faster-whisper (CUDA)	pip install faster-whisper
Any (CPU fallback)	openai-whisper	pip install -U openai-whisper

Models download lazily on first run (English base ≈ 140 MB; multilingual large-v3 ≈ 3 GB). Use a venv to keep it clean.

yt-dlp (only if source is a URL)

pip install -U yt-dlp. For unlisted/age-gated videos add --cookies-from-browser chrome.

Workflow

1. Get the source video

• Local file → use directly.
• URL → download:

  yt-dlp -f "bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]" \
    "<URL>" -o "/tmp/source.mp4"
  

• Note the source resolution (ffprobe -v error -select_streams v -show_entries stream=width,height -of csv=p=0 source.mp4) — you need it for the crop math.

2. Transcribe → SRT

Transcribe the whole source to an SRT with real timestamps. Pick the command for the platform:

# macOS (Apple Silicon)
mlx_whisper source.mp4 --model mlx-community/whisper-base-mlx \
  --language en --output-format srt --output-dir /tmp/transcript \
  --condition-on-previous-text False

# Linux + NVIDIA (faster-whisper via the CLI wrapper, or use the python API)
whisper-ctranslate2 source.mp4 --model base --language en \
  --output_format srt --output_dir /tmp/transcript --vad_filter True

# Any CPU (openai-whisper)
whisper source.mp4 --model base --language en \
  --output_format srt --output_dir /tmp/transcript

For non-English source, set --language accordingly (e.g. zh, ja, es). --condition-on-previous-text False (or --condition_on_previous_text False) reduces hallucination loops.

Quick clean-up: Whisper mangles proper nouns and often hallucinates text over intro music. Skim the SRT and fix names/products in any segment you plan to clip, and delete gibberish in the first block. A full proofread isn't needed yet — just enough to read the content.

3. Auto-suggest the best moments ← the core value

Read the full SRT and propose the strongest short-worthy segments. A good short moment is:

• Self-contained — makes sense with zero setup; doesn't reference "what I just said."
• A complete thought — starts at a sentence start, ends at a sentence end.
• Hooky — a surprising claim, a strong opinion, a vivid story, a counterintuitive insight, a crisp how-to, or a quotable one-liner.
• 15–30s ideal, ≤ 60s hard max (Shorts limit).

Present the top 5–8 candidates as a table the user can choose from:

#	In–Out	Dur	Speaker	The hook (why it works)
1	12:04–12:31	27s	…	"…" — counterintuitive take on X

Never use chapter markers as cut points — chapters mark a topic's start (with preamble), not the soundbite. Always anchor in/out to the actual SRT blocks where the line begins and ends.

If the user gave a topic/quote up front, find that segment instead (or in addition).

4. Confirm the segment & refine boundaries

Once the user picks a moment, confirm exact in/out from the SRT. For static single-camera footage, transcript timestamps are enough — skip ahead.

For footage with camera cuts / slides / multi-cam, keyframe-validate:

for t in START-2 START START+1 END-1 END END+2; do
  ffmpeg -y -ss <t> -i source.mp4 -frames:v 1 /tmp/kf_<t>.png
done

Read each frame: mid-blink? mouth frozen mid-word? slide changing? Shift the boundary ±0.5–2s for a clean in/out. Output the refined timestamps.

5. Determine the vertical crop — never guess

Decide the 9:16 crop before cutting. This is a two-stage decision: first which side the speaker is on, then fine-tune the offset within that side.

a. Read the framing & pick the side. Extract a frame from the middle of the segment and look at it: ffmpeg -y -ss <MID> -i source.mp4 -frames:v 1 /tmp/mid.png Decide which side of the frame the speaker occupies — left, center, or right — and confirm the camera is static (pull a second frame elsewhere in the segment; if it pans/cuts, a fixed crop may not work). This narrows the offset range you sample in step c — no point testing the empty half of the frame.

b. Compute the crop size from the source height (ffprobe it first). Both crop dimensions and the x offset must be even — libx264 (yuv420p) rejects odd values:

• crop_w = height × 9 ÷ 16, rounded to the nearest even number.
• crop_h = height (full height, so y = 0).
• offset range: x runs from 0 (hard left) to source_width − crop_w (hard right); center is (source_width − crop_w) ÷ 2.

Source	crop_w × crop_h	left x	center x	right (max) x
1920×1080	608×1080	0	656	1312
1280×720	404×720	0	438	876
3840×2160 (4K)	1216×2160	0	1312	2624

c. Slice within the chosen side — take 3–5 screenshots at offsets spanning only that side, then present them and let the user pick. Composition depends on gaze direction (looking-room: leave space where they look), and what's in the background — an empty wall can be worse than a tighter, busier crop. The user decides.

# Speaker on the LEFT of a 1920×1080 frame → sample left-half offsets:
for x in 0 160 320 480 640; do
  ffmpeg -y -ss <MID> -i source.mp4 -frames:v 1 -vf "crop=608:1080:$x:0" /tmp/crop_$x.png
done
# Speaker on the RIGHT → sample right-half offsets up to max x (1312):
#   for x in 704 856 1008 1160 1312; do ... done
# Centered speaker → sample around center (e.g. 496 576 656 736 816).

Keep all offsets even. Substitute your computed crop_w/max-x if the source isn't 1080p.

6. Cut & crop

Substitute your computed even crop_w:crop_h and x from step 2 (the 608:1080 below is the 1080p case):

ffmpeg -y -ss <IN> -to <OUT> -i source.mp4 \
  -vf "crop=608:1080:<X_OFFSET>:0" \
  -c:v libx264 -preset medium -crf 20 \
  -c:a aac -b:a 128k \
  /tmp/clip.mp4

Verify: extract a frame, confirm framing, confirm duration ≤ 60s, and confirm the output is exactly your target dimensions (ffprobe -v error -select_streams v -show_entries stream=width,height -of csv=p=0 /tmp/clip.mp4) — if ffmpeg silently shaved a pixel, your crop_w was odd.

Optional — upscale to full 1080×1920 for max resolution: append ,scale=1080:1920:flags=lanczos to the -vf chain (a 608×1080 crop is true 9:16 but lower-res; platforms upscale it anyway, so this is optional).

7. Re-transcribe the CUT clip — don't offset the source SRT

⚠️ Do not zero/offset the source SRT timestamps — they drift and go out of sync by the end of the clip. Instead, run Whisper on the cut clip itself for accurate timings:

mlx_whisper /tmp/clip.mp4 --model mlx-community/whisper-base-mlx \
  --language en --output-format srt --output-dir /tmp/clip_srt \
  --condition-on-previous-text False
# (or the whisper / whisper-ctranslate2 equivalent for your platform)

Then write clip.srt using Whisper's timestamps but the clean text from the source SRT:

1. Read each Whisper block to identify what is said at that timestamp (its text may be garbled — use it as a phonetic guide, e.g. "a genetic engineering" = "agentic engineering").
2. Pull the matching clean wording from your reviewed source SRT.
3. Write clean text onto Whisper's timestamp boundaries; split/merge cues to read naturally.
4. Keep cues short — at the burn-in font size each line fits ~14–16 chars, so 2–4 short lines per cue, not long sentences.

8. Burn in subtitles

Shorts/Reels display caption tracks unreliably on mobile, so bake subs into the pixels. Keep the un-subtitled clip.mp4 so you can burn other languages later.

# macOS: use ~/.local/bin/ffmpeg   |   Linux/WSL: use ffmpeg
ffmpeg -y -i /tmp/clip.mp4 \
  -vf "subtitles=/tmp/clip_srt/clip.srt:force_style='FontName=Arial,FontSize=16,Bold=1,PrimaryColour=&H00FFFFFF,OutlineColour=&H00000000,BorderStyle=1,Outline=2,Shadow=0,Alignment=2,MarginV=60'" \
  -c:v libx264 -preset medium -crf 20 -c:a copy \
  /tmp/clip-en.mp4

Style choices (don't change without reason):

• FontSize=16 — mobile-legible (~44–48px on 1080; libass scales to its internal PlayResY of 288). Each line fits ~14–16 chars.
• Bold=1, Outline=2, Shadow=0 — readable on any backdrop, no shadow noise.
• Alignment=2, MarginV=60 — bottom-center, in the lower third, above the platform UI band. Bump MarginV to 80–100 if the bottom line gets clipped.
• -c:a copy — preserve speech audio, no re-encode.

9. Verify & deliver

• Extract frames at 3–5 timestamps and check subs are on-screen, in sync, not clipped: ffmpeg -ss <N> -i /tmp/clip-en.mp4 -frames:v 1 /tmp/check_<N>.png
• On macOS, open /tmp/clip-en.mp4 for a real-time preview.
• Final output is <slug>-en.mp4. Report the path. Done — ready to upload by hand.

Output conventions

For each short, keep:

• <slug>.mp4 — cropped clip, no subs (reuse for other languages)
• <slug>-en.mp4 — burned-in final ← the deliverable
• <slug>.srt — the clip's subtitle file
• <slug>.md — cut metadata (source, in/out, duration, crop offset)

slug = kebab-case summary of the moment, e.g. capability-not-functionality.

Common mistakes

Mistake	Do instead
Offsetting the source SRT to start at 0	Re-transcribe the cut clip (step 7) — offsets drift
Using chapter timestamps as cut points	Anchor to the actual SRT block where the line starts
Guessing the crop position	First pick the speaker's side, then slice 3–5 offsets within that side; let the user pick
Odd crop width/height (e.g. 405)	Round to even — libx264 errors or silently shifts a pixel otherwise
Copy-pasting 608:1080 on a non-1080p source	Recompute crop_w from the source height (step 2 table)
Long sentences on one subtitle cue	Short phrases, ~14–16 chars/line, 2–4 lines
Burning subs with default macOS Homebrew ffmpeg	Use the libass static build (~/.local/bin/ffmpeg)
Clip over 60s	Trim to ≤ 60s (Shorts limit); 15–30s is ideal
Mapping source SRT blocks 1:1 onto Whisper timestamps	Read Whisper text to find what's actually said, then place clean text