Guide
How to clip a podcast into vertical shorts
By Rakshit · Updated
To clip a podcast for social media, take the video of the episode, cut out a self-contained moment of 15 to 90 seconds, reframe it to vertical 9:16, add captions and export. KeyMo does the finding, reframing and captioning for you from a YouTube link or an MP4 or MOV file. If you only want to share a moment from someone else's episode as a listener, your podcast app's own sharing tools are the place to look; this guide is for people who have the episode's video.
Pick the kind of clip you need
A video clip is a vertical 9:16 cut with captions, made to post on TikTok, Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts. An audio clip is a sound-only snippet. KeyMo makes the first kind: its output is always a vertical video, 1080x1920 at 30 fps, never audio-only and never 16:9.
That means you need the video of the episode. KeyMo takes a YouTube link (paid plans) or an MP4 or MOV upload. An audio-only file or a Spotify link will not work.
1. Check you have the rights and the right file
Clip your own show, or one where the host has given you permission. KeyMo asks you to confirm you own the video or have permission before it imports a YouTube link.
The video must be 5 minutes to 3 hours long. An upload can be up to 10 GB. Link import only fetches up to 1080p, so if you have a better file, upload that instead.
KeyMo has no free plan and no trial. Starter is $12 a month for 300 source minutes and Pro is $29 a month for 900. A 60-minute episode uses 60 source minutes.
2. Know what a good clip looks like
A clip works when someone who has never heard the episode can follow it. Look for one question and its answer, a short story, a strong opinion, or a surprising fact. Cut so the clip starts on the point, not on the host's lead-in.
Decision rule: if a moment needs the previous five minutes to make sense, skip it. If it still makes sense when you read it with no context, keep it.
Finding these by hand means scrubbing through the whole episode. That is the slow part, and it is the part KeyMo takes over.
3. Let KeyMo find and score the moments
Import the episode and choose a clip length. Auto picks 15 to 90 seconds for each clip. Short is 20 to 40 seconds, Medium is 40 to 60 and Long is 60 to 90. How long the job takes depends on the video length and how busy the queue is.
You get up to 15 clips. Each has a score out of 10 and a one-line reason. Only clips scoring 7 or higher are kept, so a weak episode returns fewer clips. As a built-in target, not a measured result, KeyMo aims for 3 to 5 clips from a video up to 15 minutes, 5 to 8 up to 30, 8 to 12 up to 60 and up to 15 for longer.
4. Reframe, caption and trim
A podcast is usually filmed in landscape, so it has to be reframed for vertical. KeyMo does this with automatic face tracking and trims silence.
Captions run word by word, in one of 12 styles (Pro Glow, Bold Pop, Clean, Punch, Classic, Spotlight, Pulse, Karaoke, Reader, Duo, Slide, Headline) or none. The music library has moods if a clip needs a bed.
5. Check each clip, then post
Post the highest-scoring clips first. If a clip needs a tighter opening or a different caption style, open it in the chat editor and tell KeyMo what to change. Edit mode accepts clips from 15 seconds to 10 minutes.
Download clips one by one or as a ZIP. Files are H.264/AAC MP4s with no watermark on any plan, ready to upload to TikTok, Reels or Shorts. Source files are kept for 7 days and clips for 30, so download what you need before then.