How to make gaming clips for TikTok, Shorts and Reels

The hard part of a gaming clip is having the footage at all: the best plays happen when you weren't recording. So the workflow starts before you play:

1. Turn on a replay buffer. Your PC or console keeps the last stretch of gameplay in the background, and one button saves it after something happens. Every machine below has one.
2. Save the moment right after it happens, a little longer than you need.
3. Get the file somewhere you can edit it: your PC's Videos folder, your phone through the console's app, or a USB drive.
4. Cut it to the moment with a second or two of setup before and the reaction after.
5. Make it vertical, 1080 × 1920, with your facecam over the game if you have one.
6. Add a hook and captions, then post it to TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.

All the editing steps can be done free in a browser, without uploading your footage: the video trimmer to cut it, the split screen video maker to stack your facecam over the game, and the MP4 converter for captures an app won't take.

Windows, your graphics card's software, Steam and OBS can all keep a replay running while you play. Use one, not three: each costs some performance and disk space.

Want your facecam in the clip? Game Bar, NVIDIA's and AMD's replays and Steam record the game. OBS records your whole scene, so with your webcam in it, the replay has your reaction too, and you can lay the two out for a phone afterwards. The settings that keep OBS recordings smooth and easy to edit are in the best OBS settings for recording.

Consoles keep the last moments of a game by default, and each has an app to get clips onto your phone:

• PS5: set what the Create button's shortcuts do, and how much a double-press saves, in Settings, Captures and Broadcasts, Captures, Shortcuts for Create Button, and the file type and resolution under Captures too. PlayStation's blog calls MP4 the most compatible and WebM the most efficient. Auto-upload to PS App only sends clips up to 1080p and 3 minutes, and only while the console is in rest mode with Stay Connected to the Internet on.
• Xbox: in the console's Xbox Accessories app, holding Share can be changed from Record what happened to Start recording or a screenshot. Captures uploaded to OneDrive aren't deleted after 90 days the way Xbox network ones can be; OneDrive's free plan holds 5 GB.
• Switch: 30 seconds is the most a capture keeps, so save the moment straight away.

Game footage is 16:9, and TikTok, Reels and Shorts fill a phone at 9:16. Crop the middle of a game to 9:16 and you keep about a third of its width (32%): fine for a character in the center of the screen, useless for a minimap, a scoreboard or a kill feed at the edges. Pick the layout by what the moment needs:

• Facecam over the game. Your webcam across the top at 1080 × 608, the shape of the webcam itself, and the game in the 1312 pixels below, cropped to where the action is. It's the layout clippers use for streams, because the reaction is half the clip.
• Half and half. Two panels of 1080 × 960: the game and your face at the same size, or two players' views of the same moment.
• Game only. No facecam: crop to the action, or fit the whole frame on a blurred copy of itself when what matters is spread across the screen.

The free split screen video maker does the first two in your browser: choose the stream layout, drag one box onto your webcam and one onto the game, and download a 1080 × 1920 MP4 of a part of up to 5 minutes. For game-only clips, the vertical video converter crops or fits the frame. Neither uploads your footage.

Two things to sort out first. Cut the clip down to the moment with the video trimmer (up to 10 minutes at a time), so you're not laying out minutes you won't post. And if your capture came out as a WebM, MKV or MOV that an editor or an app won't take, the free MP4 converter turns up to 20 files at once into MP4s. It copies H.264 and HEVC video as it is, so nothing is lost, and re-encodes other formats to H.264.

• Start at the moment, not before it. Give it one or two seconds of setup (the enemy around the corner, the last lap, the boss at a sliver of health) and then let it happen. Thirty seconds of walking to the fight loses people before the fight.
• Put a hook on screen. One line of text in the first second that makes people wait for the payoff: “he had no idea I was there”, “first try, no way”. Keep it inside the area the apps' buttons don't cover, which the free safe zone checker shows.
• Caption what you say. A lot of people scroll with the sound off, and a shouted reaction lands better when it's on screen too. See how to caption short videos.
• End on the reaction. Cut a beat after the laugh or the scream, before the celebration drags.

Length: most gaming clips that work are one moment, from setup to reaction, and that's usually well under a minute. Shorts can be up to 3 minutes, and Reels over 3 minutes aren't recommended to people who don't follow you, so a longer story clip should still stay under 3. More in how long a short video should be.

Post the same vertical clip to TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels: one 1080 × 1920 file works on all three, and each reaches people the others don't. Upload the file you exported to each app, never a copy saved from another app with its watermark on it; more in how to cross-post short videos. On YouTube, gaming Shorts also sit next to your long videos and streams on the same channel, so a clip can lead people to the full run.

Check the publisher's rules. Game footage belongs to whoever made the game, and most publishers let you post it on their terms:

• Nintendo doesn't object to videos of its games if you add creative input or commentary (or post with its own features, like the Capture button), and lets you earn from them only through the programs it lists, such as the YouTube Partner Program and Twitch's Affiliate and Partner programs. TikTok wasn't on that list when we checked.
• Microsoft's Game Content Usage Rules let you share videos of its games on YouTube or Twitch and earn from those sites' ad programs, with a notice and a link to the rules. A game's soundtrack and sound effects are often licensed from others, so unless Microsoft says you have the rights, you need permission from their owner, especially in games with licensed music.

Music is the usual trouble: a licensed song in a game, or music playing in the background, can get a clip muted or claimed. Clip the moments where your voice and the game's own sounds carry it.

If you stream, your best clips are already recorded: the stream itself. You just have to find them before the replay expires.

• Mark moments as they happen. On Twitch, type /marker in chat, or use the Add Stream Marker quick action, and the marker shows on the past broadcast's timeline when you make Highlights. With OBS, set a Save Replay hotkey and press it when something happens, while you stream.
• Use the platform's clips. Twitch clips run up to 60 seconds, and Twitch makes a portrait version of every clip automatically. Kick clips run up to 3 minutes and download as MP4s. The clips your viewers made are the moments they picked.
• Keep the whole stream. Twitch keeps past broadcasts for 7 days for most streamers, 14 for Affiliates and 60 for Partners (and Prime and Turbo users), so download yours, or record locally in OBS while you stream and you have a copy at full quality.

The details for each platform are in how to clip on Twitch and how to clip Kick streams, and finding the moments in hours of stream is in how to clip streams.

A four-hour stream holds a week of clips, and finding them by hand means watching it again. Clyper does that part for streams and VODs on YouTube, or uploaded as a file (MP4, MOV, WebM or MKV, up to 4 GB and 4 hours):

1. It reads the whole stream's transcript and picks the moments that stand on their own, 20 to 60 seconds each, with a score for how strong each one's opening is: up to one clip per 2 minutes of stream and 30 in all.
2. It cuts each on whole sentences, so no clip starts or ends mid-word.
3. It finds your webcam (a face that stays put in a corner) and stacks it over the middle of the game for the shots it's in, at 1080 × 608 on top; with no game on screen, it frames you alone.
4. It captions every word, on the seam between the webcam and the game while that layout is on, and you download 1080 × 1920 MP4s with no watermark.

One honest limit: Clyper picks moments from what's said. It finds your reactions, stories and hot takes, because you talk through them; a silent clutch play with no commentary isn't in a transcript. Save those with your replay buffer. Clyper takes YouTube links and uploads, not Twitch or Kick links: download the VOD and upload it, or paste the YouTube link if you stream there too. More in stream clips with Clyper.