How to make YouTube Shorts from long videos
3 min read · Updated October 24, 2026
Your long videos are full of Shorts. Find the moments that stand on their own, crop them upright, caption them and post them — or let AI do it from the link.
Turn a long video into Shorts →The steps
- 1
Find moments that stand alone
A story with a payoff, a strong opinion, a reaction, a surprising fact. Someone who never saw the full video should get it.
- 2
Crop to vertical
9:16, following whoever is talking, or the wide shot in the middle with a blurred copy behind it.
- 3
Tighten and caption
Start on the hook, cut pauses and filler, add big captions and a short heading.
- 4
Post with a link back
Shorts can link to the related long video, which sends viewers to the full thing.
With AI, from the link
Paste the YouTube link (or upload) into Zlayo, choose how many Shorts and how long, and it transcribes the video, picks the strongest moments (spread across the video's chapters if it has them), frames, trims and captions each one. You can also paste exact timestamps to cut.
Questions
Yes, it's one of the best ways to grow; every good moment can become a Short that sends people to the full video.
Yes. Zlayo's AI clip maker does it from the link.