How to make clips in CapCut, step by step

Making a clip in CapCut is the same eight steps on a computer and on a phone; only the buttons move. CapCut's menus change between versions, so if a name doesn't match your screen, look nearby.

The sections below go through each step and what to watch for, then what changes when you need twenty clips instead of one.

This is the step that takes longest, and CapCut's editor leaves it to you. In an hour-long podcast or stream, the moments worth posting add up to a few minutes, and you have to find each one.

• Read before you watch. A transcript is faster to skim than video. The free video to text converter transcribes it in your browser with timestamps, so you can jump straight to the lines worth clipping.
• Look for a line that works on its own: a strong opinion, a story with an ending, a surprising number, a big reaction. If it needs the five minutes before it, it isn't a clip.
• Write down the start and end times of every moment before you cut anything, then cut them all in one pass.

CapCut's Split scenes (right-click a clip on desktop) divides a video into its scenes automatically. That helps with edited footage, but on one camera pointed at a conversation it splits by what's on screen, not by what's said. CapCut also has a separate Long video to shorts tool that picks highlights for you; more on that below.

1. Split before the moment. Put the playhead just before it starts and split: the Split button above the timeline or Ctrl+B (Cmd+B on a Mac) on desktop; tap the clip, then Split, on mobile.
2. Split after it. Put the playhead just after it ends and split again.
3. Delete the rest, so only the clip is left on the timeline.
4. Trim it tight. Open on the hook, not the setup, and end on the payoff, not the minute of reaction after it.

Cut on whole sentences. A clip that starts mid-word or stops before the point lands feels like a mistake, and people swipe. Most clips that work run 20 to 60 seconds; see how long a short video should be.

A YouTube video is 16:9. TikTok, Reels and Shorts are 9:16: 1080 × 1920 pixels. Change the project's ratio, not just the clip:

• Set the ratio. On desktop, click Ratio under the player and pick 9:16. The canvas turns tall, with the wide video in the middle and empty space above and below it.
• Fill the frame. Scale the video up until it fills the height, then drag it so the speaker is in the middle. A 9:16 crop keeps about 32% of a 16:9 video's width, so with two people on screen, only one fits.
• Auto reframe follows the subject for you: select the clip, then Auto reframe in the Video panel on the right (on mobile, Adjust, then Auto Reframe). CapCut's help center says it moved to CapCut Pro after a free trial period, on desktop, mobile and online.
• Without Pro, you move the video yourself every time the speaker moves or someone else talks. That's where a two-person podcast clip gets slow.

For a single crop where nobody moves, the free vertical video converter makes any video 1080 × 1920 in your browser, cropped or fitted. Clyper's auto reframe follows whoever's talking in every clip it makes.

1. Generate them. On desktop, open Captions, then Auto captions (in some versions it's under Text), choose the spoken language and generate. On mobile, tap Captions in the bottom menu. Pick the right language: CapCut says a wrong one is a common cause of missing or wrong captions.
2. Fix the words. On desktop, double-click a caption (or right-click it and choose Edit captions) and retype what's wrong; on mobile, tap Edit captions. CapCut says accuracy drops with background noise, accents and fast speech, so read every line, names most of all.
3. Style them. Big, bold, a few words at a time, and clear of the apps' buttons. Check where they sit with the safe zone checker.

On cost: CapCut's help center says auto captions can include Pro-only functionality, and that if a project uses anything marked with the Pro icon, CapCut asks you to upgrade when you export. Look for the Pro mark before you style a dozen clips the same way.

For a single clip, the free auto caption generator turns speech into timed captions you can edit and download as SRT or VTT, and add captions to video burns them in word by word. What makes captions easy to read is in how to caption short videos.

The hook. A line of text near the top for the first few seconds tells people why to keep watching. On desktop, open Text, then Default text, put it on the timeline above the clip and type; on mobile, tap Text. Keep it under ten words, and make it a promise the clip keeps. The hook generator has formulas to start from.

Export. On desktop, click Export in the top right and set Resolution to 1080p. On mobile, tap the resolution next to Export and choose 1080P. With the ratio at 9:16, that gives you a 1080 × 1920 video, the size TikTok, Reels and Shorts are made for. Check any file with the video size checker.

A watermark on it? CapCut's help center says it usually comes from CapCut's default ending clip or a template element, not from the export itself. Delete the ending clip from the end of the timeline and export again.

Everything above is one clip. A campaign or a podcast episode wants many, and in CapCut's editor each one is the whole routine again: find the moment, split, frame, caption, fix, hook, export. It's a good editor; it just has you do every step yourself.

The times are our estimates for someone who knows CapCut, not measurements. Yours depend on the video and how much you polish each clip.

CapCut has its own answer to this: a Long video to shorts tool that picks highlights from a video you upload, reframes them to 9:16 and captions them. It works from a file on your device or in cloud storage, not a YouTube link. Clyper starts from the link, picks up to 30 moments from a video up to 4 hours long, cuts each on whole sentences and scores each one's hook, so you know which to post first. The side-by-side is in Clyper vs CapCut, the other tools that clip for you are in CapCut alternatives for clipping, and how tools like these choose moments is in how AI clip generators work.

You don't have to choose one. Let Clyper make the clips, then open the ones you want to dress up in CapCut: they're 1080 × 1920 MP4s with no watermark, so they edit like any other video. An hour-long video uses 60 credits however many clips you take, up to 30, and Starter's 150 credits a month ($20) cover 2 hour-long videos. The full manual route is in how to turn a YouTube video into Shorts.

Sometimes a clip needs one thing done, and opening an editor is more than it takes. These run in your browser, free:

• Vertical video converter: a 16:9 video made 1080 × 1920, cropped or fitted.
• Auto caption generator: timed captions from speech, to edit and download as SRT or VTT.
• Add captions to video: word-by-word captions burned into a vertical video.
• Remove silence from video: the pauses taken out.
• Video trimmer: a video cut down to the part you want, at the same quality.