SShortsFromVideo

How ShortsFromVideo works

Developers: see the API reference.

1. Import

  • Upload any video or audio file (MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, MP3, WAV) up to your plan's length limit.
  • Or paste a link: YouTube, Google Drive or Dropbox (shared as “anyone with the link”), a Zoom cloud recording (connect Zoom in Settings), or any direct .mp4 URL.
  • Already have subtitles? Attach an .srt/.vtt and we skip speech recognition.

2. Speech to text

  • Speech runs on Surge's own servers (Whisper). Every word gets a timestamp.
  • Captions are in the language spoken; English is the default.

3. How clips are chosen

  • We cut only on sentence boundaries, so a clip never ends before the punchline.
  • Every candidate gets features: hook strength, payoff, loudness/energy, pace, topic keywords, emotion, completeness and length fit.
  • Our AI (Surge GPU first, Claude as a fallback) then reviews the top candidates like a short-form editor and writes titles, hooks and hashtags.
  • The virality score (0–100) blends both. Each clip shows the reason it scored.

4. Your ranker learns

  • On Analytics, add views/watch time for posted clips (or let YouTube results flow in).
  • After 8 clips with results we refit the scoring weights for your workspace — your audience, not an average creator's.

5. Framing

  • Follow the speaker: we track people in the frame and cut (not pan) to whoever is talking, with a 1-second guard so the frame doesn't jump on a cough.
  • Split screen: two speakers stacked. Fit: whole frame on a blurred background.

6. Captions & platforms

  • Five animated styles: karaoke, pop, bounce, boxed, minimal. Emoji and keyword highlights are automatic.
  • Each platform gets its own version: Reels and TikTok keep captions above the app's buttons; LinkedIn gets calm sentence-case captions without emoji.

7. Editing

  • Open a clip to edit by text: click words to set start/end, strike words to cut them, auto-cut fillers (um, uh, matlab, ante…) and long pauses.
  • Re-rendering is always free — only source minutes count.

8. Publish

  • Schedule to YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok, LinkedIn and X from any clip — several accounts at once. Leave the time empty and we pick each platform's best hour (learned from your own stats).
  • Export MP4, SRT/VTT, or Premiere / DaVinci XML.
  • Podcast bundle: one click writes an SEO blog post, a LinkedIn post and an X thread from the episode.

9. Pricing

  • Free at launch: every feature, no watermark, fair use of source minutes per month.
  • Optional paid outside engines (studio voices for voice-over) are charged at exactly their cost to us, from a prepaid credit. See Pricing.