OpenShorts

OpenShorts is a video clipping service that converts long-form videos, including video podcasts, into short vertical clips for TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. It transcribes source video with word-level timestamps, detects scenes, and uses Google Gemini to select the strongest 3 to 15 segments from an episode, each 15 to 60 seconds long. Clips are reframed automatically, including a split-screen layout for two-person conversations so both speakers remain visible, with burned-in subtitles and direct publishing to social platforms.

The product is accessible through a web dashboard, a REST API, and a command-line tool, and it exposes a native MCP server so AI agents such as Claude or ChatGPT can trigger clipping, scheduling and publishing through natural-language instructions. The API and MCP tools draw from the same minute-based usage balance as the dashboard rather than charging per API call. OpenShorts also offers a self-hosted, MIT-licensed edition with no usage meter.

OpenShorts serves podcasters, content creators and developers who want to automate the process of turning long videos or podcast episodes into short-form social clips. Typical use cases include scheduled or event-triggered clipping pipelines built with cron jobs, GitHub Actions, or workflow tools like n8n, Zapier and Make, using webhooks to signal job completion. The company positions its per-minute pricing and unmetered self-hosted option as an alternative to credit-based competitors that bill for full episode length.