Make Shorts from a long video
Spoolfield cuts vertical clips for YouTube Shorts, Reels and TikTok from a longer video, with captions that light up word by word. The work runs on our servers, so it works the same on any computer or phone.
Only use videos you made, videos licensed for reuse, or videos you have permission to use.
1. Add your video
- Open Spoolfield and sign in.
- Under Your video, choose Link and paste a link from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, Pinterest, Dailymotion or Weibo, then click Add. Spoolfield shows the title and length.
- Or choose Upload and drop in a file from your computer or phone. See Uploads and your files.
2. Say what you want, or pick the tool
- Type a request in Say what you want, such as “3 Shorts about pricing with bold captions”, and press the button next to it. Spoolfield fills in the tool and its settings for you. This is free, and nothing starts until you press Run.
- Or choose Make a Short under Tool and set it up yourself.
3. Choose the moments
- Best moments
- Spoolfield reads the whole video and picks the moments most likely to keep people watching. Each clip shows a score from 0 to 100 and a short reason, and the clips come best first, so you know which one to post first. Picking the moments is free; you pay for the speech-to-text and the clips, the same as with a topic. A video of 3 minutes or less becomes one clip, so there is nothing to pick.
- By topic
- Type a Topic, such as “the funny part” or “tips”. Spoolfield turns the speech into text, finds the moments where it comes up, and ends each clip on a whole sentence. Set How many clips (1 to 10) and the Length of each (10 to 90 seconds).
- Pick the times
- Type the start and end of each clip, like 1:30 to 2:05, and use Add a clip for more. Each clip can be up to 3 minutes.
Check the moments first
With Best moments or By topic, turn on Check the moments first: fix times and words before making the clips. Spoolfield turns the speech into text and picks the moments, then stops so you can change the start and end of each clip, fix any words it heard wrong (names often need it), and untick clips you don’t want. Press Use these clips, check the price and press Run. You pay for the speech-to-text when checking and for the clips when you make them; the text isn’t charged twice.
4. Shape and captions
- Shape: 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok, 1:1 square, 4:5 for feeds, or 16:9 wide.
- Fill: Follow the speaker crops a wide video to the vertical frame and moves the frame to keep the person talking in view, which suits interviews, podcasts and talks. If it can’t find a face (no people in the picture, or they look away most of the time), the clip is cropped in the middle instead. Crop to fill fills the frame and cuts the edges, which works well when the speaker is in the middle. Fit + blur keeps the whole picture on a blurred copy of itself.
- Caption style: Pop, Box, Word (one big word at a time) or Clean (plain subtitles), or No captions. The Preview shows how it looks.
- Caption position: Bottom, Middle or Top.
5. Check the price and run
- The bar at the bottom shows how many credits the job uses before you start. See How credits work.
- Press Run. The job appears under Your jobs with its progress, and you can keep working while it runs.
- When it’s ready, play the clips right on the page and press Save to download them. They stay for 1 to 7 days, depending on your plan.