In simple English
This tool takes a long YouTube video and turns it into several short vertical clips for TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. It reads the audio, finds the most exciting moments using a language model, and cuts the video to fit vertical screens automatically. You can run it for free by using your own software tools, or pay for an online service to do the heavy lifting. It removes the need for expensive monthly video subscriptions or manual editing. You need some comfort with the command line to set it up.
What it is
An open-source Python application that automates the process of finding highlights in long-form videos and reframing them for vertical viewing. It includes two modes, allowing you to use either remote cloud APIs or local tools like Whisper and FFmpeg (a command-line tool for converting and editing video and audio files).
What it is good for
Content creators and solo builders who want to repurpose long podcasts or interviews into viral short clips without paying high monthly subscription fees to commercial services.
- Free and open source under the MIT licence, with no per-clip credit limits.
- Supports both a cloud API mode and a local mode that runs entirely on your own hardware.
- Outputs clean JSON data alongside the rendered video files for easy automation.
- Requires command-line knowledge and Python installed on your computer.
- Local mode needs a fast computer, ideally with a dedicated graphics card (a GPU, which is a specialized processor for handling heavy math and graphics tasks quickly), and FFmpeg installed.
- Running local transcription and video cropping takes significant time and memory.
Paid monthly subscriptions to commercial video clipping services like Opus Clip and Vidyo.ai.
yt-dlp for downloading videos and ffmpeg for processing media files.
- SamurAIGPT/AI-Influencer-Generator332 stars
Another automated video generation tool from the same author focused on AI influencers.
- SamurAIGPT/AI-Faceless-Video-Generator521 stars
Creates automated faceless videos for social media platforms using similar AI pipelines.
- snapcast/snapcast8.0k stars
A server and clients that play one audio stream in several rooms, kept in time with each other.
- MusicPlayerDaemon/MPD2.8k stars
A background music player with no interface of its own, controlled over a network by separate client programs.
- AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenTimelineIO2.0k stars
An interchange format and library for editing timelines: the order and length of cuts, and references to the media, but not the media.
git clone https://github.com/SamurAIGPT/AI-Youtube-Shorts-Generator.git cd AI-Youtube-Shorts-Generator python3.10 -m venv venv source venv/bin/activate pip install -r requirements.txt