Video highlight finder

1. Choose the recording, or drop it on the player: a stream VOD, a podcast episode, a long video, or just its sound. Files up to 6 hours work.
2. Wait while it listens. Only the sound is read, so it takes far less time than the recording runs. The highlights appear on the bar under the player and in a list, best first.
3. Pick a clip length: 30, 45, 60 or 90 seconds (45 to start). The clips follow it straight away.
4. Play each highlight, from the list or the bar. Keep the ones that make sense on their own.
5. Save clip downloads that part of the file, or press Copy timestamps to take the whole list to your editor.

It listens to the loudness, not the words. It measures how loud the sound is 50 times a second, then compares every moment with the two minutes around it. That's why a quiet podcast and a loud stream both get highlights: what counts is how much louder a moment is than the talk around it, not how loud it is on its own. If the mic was turned up halfway through, the moments in the quieter half still count.

A moment ranks higher the further it rises, the longer it holds (a single bang counts for less than five seconds of laughter) and the quieter it was just before, so a sudden burst after a calm stretch stands out. Silence never rises, and neither does steady sound like music under a stream, so they're left out.

Each highlight becomes a clip of the length you pick, starting a few seconds before it gets loud (in a pause when there's one near, so it doesn't open mid-word). Clips never overlap. You see about one for every three minutes of the recording (up to 20 at first), and can ask for more.

What it can't hear: a great line said calmly, a look, a clever play in silence. And a loud song, an ad, a donation alert or an explosion in a game counts the same as a laugh. Treat the list as where to look first, not as the clips to post.

• Listen to what comes before the noise. The laugh is the payoff; the story or the joke before it is the clip. If the setup starts earlier than the clip does, choose a longer length or move the start with the video trimmer.
• Keep the ones that stand on their own. Someone scrolling hasn't seen the stream. If a moment needs five minutes of context, skip it, however loud it is.
• Start on the first words. The opening second decides whether people stay, so trim any dead air at the start. More in how to make clips that go viral.
• On a stream, keep the reaction in the frame. The webcam is what makes a gaming moment work vertically: put it over the game with the split screen video maker.
• On a podcast, follow the laughter back to the story. A run of highlights close together is often one good conversation: listen to the whole stretch and cut the best minute of it.

Then make each clip 9:16 with the vertical video converter and caption it with the auto caption generator. For a podcast that's only sound, the audiogram maker turns a clip into a video.

From Twitch, download a past broadcast from the Video Producer, under Content in your Creator Dashboard. Twitch keeps past broadcasts for 7 days for most streamers, 14 days for Affiliates and 60 days for most Partners and Prime and Turbo users, and only if Store past broadcasts was turned on before you went live, so download the streams you want to clip before they go.

From YouTube, download your own video in YouTube Studio: Content, then the video's menu, then Download. It comes as an MP4 at 720p or 360p, up to five times a day for each video, so if you have the original recording (from OBS, Riverside or your camera), use that instead.

Clipping someone else's stream or show? You need their permission, which clipping campaigns give. See how Clyper handles stream clips, podcast clips and Twitch VODs.