How to Make YouTube Shorts From a Long Video

To make Shorts from a YouTube video, you pick passages that make sense on their own, reframe them to vertical (9:16) without cutting anyone off, add captions and a title, then publish the Short on the same channel and point it back to the long video. Once the routine is set, you can hand it over to a tool that watches your channel.

That's the order this guide follows. Full disclosure: we build Nysos, which automates part of these steps, and each step is also explained for anyone who'd rather do it all by hand.

How do you choose which parts to turn into Shorts?

Watch your video with one question in mind: would someone who has never seen your channel understand this passage? If so, it's a candidate. Four shapes suit the format especially well.

• A clear answer to a specific question (“how do I do X?”, “why does Y happen?”).
• A demo or a tip that fits in under two minutes.
• A twist or a reaction: the moment something surprising is said or happens.
• A strong opinion, defended in a few sentences.

Avoid passages that point back to what came before (“as we saw earlier”), ones that open with a long preamble, and ones that depend on a chart or on-screen text too small for a vertical frame. A twenty-minute video can yield several Shorts, but that's not a target: if you only find one really good one, publish that one. A Short isn't your video cut down to size. It's a self-contained passage with its own start and its own ending.

If you'd rather not scan the whole video yourself, Nysos does the first pass: paste the YouTube link and it transcribes the speech, finds the strong moments using the transcript, the audio and the picture, and offers them as clips. You keep the ones that fit the four shapes above, and you always review before publishing: the engine proposes, you decide.

How do you go from landscape to vertical without cutting people off?

A Short is vertical, 1080×1920 pixels (9:16), while your video is landscape. The trap is the center crop, which slices through a face or leaves an empty frame. Depending on what's on screen, there are several ways to handle it.

• One face: crop a vertical column that follows the face through the video.
• Two people in conversation: a split screen, one face on top, one below.
• A shot with no clean crop available (several faces, a face that's hard to track): the whole frame, centered, over a blurred background.

In Nysos this is automatic and decided shot by shot: the same video can move from a column on one face to a split screen, then to a blurred background, depending on what's happening on screen. You can reframe a single clip by hand from its page, with one full-screen frame or two stacked frames, and go back to automatic framing in a click.

By hand, in a regular video editor, you do the same thing with keyframes: fine for one Short, slow for ten. Whatever the method, check the first second and the frames where people move the most, because that's where reframes go wrong.

Do Shorts need captions?

In practice, yes. Plenty of people watch with the sound off, and a Short without captions loses them before they've heard a word. Nysos adds animated captions to every clip, with the spoken word highlighted word by word. You choose from six styles (Nysos Pro, Storytime, Punch, Anime, Casual, Clean) or none; each style comes with its own colors, font and position.

The text is corrected by AI after transcription, in the language detected in your video. Still read over proper names, brands and technical terms: a typo shows instantly, and you can fix it on the clip's page before regenerating. You pick the style in the form (“Quick preset”), in a preset, or afterwards from the clip's page.

What title should a Short have?

On YouTube, a title is capped at 100 characters and the description at 5,000. The shorter the title, the faster it reads at a glance. For each clip, Nysos suggests a title of 60 characters or fewer, with one word in capitals, written in the language of the video. It becomes the post title and can also appear at the start of the clip as a title card, for 5 seconds.

A good Short title raises a question or makes a promise the passage keeps, without handing over the answer: “Why this setting changes EVERYTHING” rather than “Camera setting”. You can edit it on the clip's page before regenerating. If you use hashtags, add them to the description yourself.

How do you publish a Short on the same channel?

Connect your YouTube channel to Nysos once, then publish from the clip's page: title, description and visibility (public, unlisted or private) are set in the publishing window. You can post right away or, depending on your plan, pick a date; the Planning view then lets you move or cancel. For your first Short, publish it as private and watch it on YouTube before making it public: how it looks on your channel is the only check that counts.

On a free account, the published clip carries the “Made with Nysos” watermark, and paid plans remove it. Also, YouTube itself decides what counts as a Short, under its own rules (vertical format, short duration): check the current length limit in YouTube's help pages, as it has changed in recent years. The same vertical file can go to TikTok too. Only the title changes, at 150 characters or fewer.

How often should you post Shorts from one video?

You don't have to publish every Short from a video on the day it goes live. Spreading them over the following days gives each one a chance to be seen and leaves you something to post between long videos. The right pace is the one you can sustain: two or three Shorts a week, steadily, beat a burst followed by a long silence. Nobody can promise an audience result at any pace. In YouTube Studio, look at which Shorts hold people best and let that guide your next picks: it's a measurement on your own channel, far more useful than a general rule.

How do you send viewers from the Short to the long video?

A Short is a taste; the long video is the full meal. Three simple habits:

• Put the link to the full video in the Short's description, on the very first line.
• Say there's more, out loud or in the title, without cheating: the Short has to stand on its own.
• Check in YouTube Studio whether the option to link a Short to a video on your channel is available on your account.

These are habits, not guarantees: nobody can promise that Shorts will lift views on the long video. Compare for yourself over a few weeks in YouTube Studio.

Can you automate Shorts for every new upload?

Yes, with Live Watcher. You point it at a YouTube channel: it watches that channel's Videos tab and starts processing when a new video shows up there. It picks up videos between 3 minutes and 2 hours.

It follows new uploads. For an older video, paste its link in the form. The video's minutes are deducted from your quota the way a normal job's are, and Live Watcher is included in every plan, the free plan too. You can attach a preset to it (caption style, postable title, intro). The clips then wait in your account: you review them, keep the good ones and publish. It also watches Twitch and Kick streams if you go live there.

Can you make Shorts from someone else's video?

From your own videos, yes, subject to the rights in what they contain: licensed music or a film clip can trigger a claim, even inside a Short. For another creator's video you need their permission. Plenty of creators grant it explicitly, particularly through clipper programs: ask before you publish.

Pasting a YouTube link or watching a channel in Nysos assumes you hold the rights to the videos involved. Quotation rules vary from country to country and don't replace permission; this guide isn't legal advice.

Where should you start?

Take your latest video, pick one passage that stands alone, and turn it into a Short by following the steps above. To compare with the automated version, paste the same video's link into Nysos: the free plan gives 60 source minutes a month, no credit card needed.