AI Viral Clip Cutter — Long Video to Shorts

AI Viral Clip Cutter: one long video in, ranked vertical clips out

Point it at a direct link to a podcast, interview or webinar recording. It transcribes the whole thing, scores each moment for how clip-worthy it looks, cuts the strongest ones to 9:16 with a blurred fill instead of a crop, and burns word-synced captions onto each one.

Two things to know before you start. The transcription and the scoring run on your own OpenAI key, so OpenAI bills you for those separately. And the source needs to be short: audio much past about thirteen minutes tends to fail at the transcription step, so trim a long episode before you feed it in.

✂️ What AI Viral Clip Cutter does

Four steps, one pass.

Transcribe. The whole audio track, in the language you name or detected automatically.

Score. Each moment gets a 0 to 100 score built from five dimensions: hook, emotion, flow, value and trend. minScore sets the bar and maxClips sets how many of the survivors get cut, strongest first.

Cut. The clip is taken from the source at the model's timestamps, with half a second of padding either side. 9:16 and 1:1 put the frame on a blurred background rather than cropping the sides off a speaker. 16:9 keeps the source shape.

Caption. Word-synced captions in one of five looks: karaoke, hormozi, beast, tiktok or clean.

The score ranks candidates for you to review. It is not a prediction that anything will go viral.

📥 What you give it

{
  "videoUrl": "https://your-cdn.com/podcast-ep-42.mp4",
  "maxClips": 5,
  "minScore": 60,
  "aspectRatio": "9:16",
  "burnCaptions": true,
  "captionPreset": "karaoke",
  "openaiApiKey": "your key here"
}

videoUrl has to be the file, not the page it sits on. For a YouTube source, run YouTube Video Downloader first and feed it the file link.

📤 What you get back

One dataset row per clip, and the rendered MP4 in the run's key-value store under the key named on the row.

Run it with no videoUrl and this real record is what you get, written to the key-value store under SAMPLE_AND_NOTICES rather than to the dataset:

{
  "_demo": true,
  "_notice": "SAMPLE OUTPUT ... provide a \"videoUrl\" and \"openaiApiKey\" to generate real viral clips.",
  "ok": true,
  "clips": 0,
  "note": "Demo run: no \"videoUrl\" supplied.",
  "aspectRatio": "9:16",
  "maxClips": 5,
  "minScore": 60,
  "sourceDurationSeconds": 0
}

🧾 Reading the output

That second line is the one to watch. When no moment clears minScore, a row still goes to the dataset saying so, and a row is a row. Lower minScore and re-run rather than repeating it at the same setting.

If every clip fails to render, the run still finishes as succeeded with an empty dataset, and the reasons are in SAMPLE_AND_NOTICES. Check the key-value store before assuming a quiet run did nothing.

▶️ How to run it

1. Open AI Viral Clip Cutter and click Try for free. 2. Paste a direct link to your video file into Video URL. 3. Put your key into OpenAI API key (BYO). 4. Set Max clips and Aspect ratio, pick a Caption style, then click Start. 5. Read the rows in the Dataset tab and download the MP4s from the Key-value store tab.

💰 How much does it cost?

$0.20 per row in the dataset. Flat on every Apify plan, no volume tiers.

In a normal run one row is one finished clip, so five clips cost $1.00. maxClips is your ceiling.

There is no per-minute charge on the source however long it is, and nothing extra for the transcript, the scoring pass, the reframe or the burned captions. One row covers all of it.

The only row that costs you without giving you a clip is the one written when nothing scored at or above minScore.

Transcription and scoring run on your own OpenAI key, and OpenAI bills you for that usage directly. Nothing is added on top here.

💡 What people use it for

• Turning a weekly podcast episode into a handful of vertical clips without opening an editor.
• Pulling the three strongest minutes out of a long interview for a launch day.
• Making square cuts for a feed and wide cuts for a channel from the same recording.
• Getting title, reason and hashtags written for you, so the posting queue is half filled in.

🚧 What it does not do

• Long sources are the weak point. Audio much past about thirteen minutes tends to fail at

transcription. Split a long episode first.

• Only the first 24,000 characters of the transcript are scored. Anything said after that is

never considered, even on a source that transcribes fine.

• It does not take a YouTube page link. Give it the video file.
• A high score is not a prediction. It ranks candidates for a human to review.
• Captions are sized for a vertical frame. With aspectRatio: "original" on a landscape source

they can come out the wrong size. Use 16:9 for landscape.

• Clip boundaries come from the model, with half a second of padding. Expect to trim a few by

hand.

• No speech, no clips. A source with no audio track, or with nothing spoken, ends the run as

failed rather than returning anything.

• One video per run. Schedule or loop for a back catalogue.

🧭 Which AI video actor do you need?

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need an OpenAI key? Yes. Transcription and moment scoring both run on it. Without a key you get the sample record in the key-value store and no clips.

Does a high score mean it will go viral? No. It is a ranking heuristic, so the best candidates come first and you still decide what to post.

Why did I get fewer clips than maxClips? Not enough moments cleared minScore. Lower it and run again.

Can I feed it a YouTube link? Not directly. Download the file first, then pass that link.

Where are the video files? In the run's key-value store, one per clip, with the key and a link on each dataset row.

Can an AI assistant run it? Yes, through Apify's MCP server: https://mcp.apify.com/?actors=dami_studio/ai-viral-clip-cutter.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Send the run ID and the length of the source. The notes in SAMPLE_AND_NOTICES usually say what dropped.