Podcast to Shorts: from one long episode to a batch of YouTube Shorts

The problem with long episodes on a Shorts feed

Your episode is already on YouTube, and it is a 16:9 video that runs an hour or more. Shorts are vertical and short, and the audience that browses them has not chosen your show yet. A podcast to Shorts workflow has to solve two things at once: choosing which 30 or 60 seconds of conversation can stand alone, and turning a wide shot into a frame that works on a phone.

Doing that by hand means scrubbing the whole recording, noting timestamps, cutting, cropping and captioning each piece. KeyMo takes the episode and returns a ranked set of finished clips. You still decide which ones go out, and that decision is the part worth your attention.

What YouTube says Shorts are

YouTube's pages do not state a recommended pixel size for vertical Shorts, so nothing here claims one. They also give no official Shorts caption safe-zone figures. Judge your first batch on a phone before you upload the rest.

Worked example: a 60-minute episode

KeyMo sets a clip-count target from the length of the source. These are built-in targets, not measured results, and only clips that score 7 out of 10 or higher are kept, so a flat episode returns fewer.

So a 60-minute episode is aimed at 8 to 12 clips and uses 60 of your source minutes. On Starter, 300 minutes covers five such episodes a month. On Pro, 900 covers fifteen. Review the shortlist, keep the best four or five for the week, and hold the others for slow weeks. You are not obliged to publish everything the tool returns.

Choosing a clip length for Shorts

Because Shorts allow up to 3 minutes, a 90-second ceiling is a real limit if you want long Shorts. KeyMo will not export a 2 or 3 minute clip. For most podcast moments that is fine, since a point rarely needs more than 90 seconds to land.

How to run it

1. Copy your episode's YouTube link and paste it into KeyMo. Link import is for paid plans, fetches up to 1080p and asks you to confirm you own the video or have permission. You can upload an MP4 or MOV instead, up to 10 GB.
2. Pick Auto or one of the three length presets.
3. Read the score and one-line reason on each clip, and open the ones you like.
4. Pick one of the 12 caption styles or none. Captions are word by word.
5. Fix anything in the chat editor, which accepts clips from 15 seconds to 10 minutes, then download the ZIP.
6. Upload the files in YouTube Studio. For Shorts uploaded from a computer, YouTube allows up to 15 at a time, and each needs its details completed before it can be published.

More background lives in how to clip a podcast, and YouTube to Shorts covers non-podcast sources.

YouTube's own tool and where KeyMo fits

YouTube has a built-in route from long videos to Shorts. Its Edit into a Short tool picks up to 60 seconds from a public long-form video you uploaded. Private, unlisted and third-party claimed videos cannot be used, and Audio Library music is not available on Shorts made that way.

• One clip from a public episode you uploaded: try YouTube's tool first.
• A ranked batch with captions and a face-tracked crop: KeyMo.
• A recording that is not on YouTube, such as a private file: upload it to KeyMo as MP4 or MOV.
• A clip longer than 90 seconds: cut it yourself, because KeyMo's ceiling is 90.

If you are comparing dedicated clippers, KeyMo vs Opus Clip and KeyMo vs Klap read each vendor's own pages.

Reused-content rules, in plain terms