Turn long videos into viral vertical clips
Soft Clipper is a Windows and Mac app that reads your long video, finds the moments worth posting, and cuts them into 9:16 clips with captions — in the time it takes to make coffee.
Windows 10 and 11, or macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon) · ~168 MB installer · 1 licence = 1 PC, activated online, then works offline
One-time wasWhat is Soft Clipper? It's a one-time-purchase desktop app that turns a long video — a podcast, interview or stream — into short vertical clips ready for TikTok, Reels and Shorts. It finds the moments worth posting, reframes them to 9:16 so the speaker stays in frame, and burns in captions, all on your own computer. No subscription, no per-minute charges.
Editing a two-hour recording into clips takes a full day
Scrubbing for the good bits, re-cropping every shot so a face is not cut in half, typing captions, exporting one file at a time. Most people give up after a few weeks, and the back catalogue never gets posted.
Finding moments is the slow part
Soft Clipper reads a timestamped transcript and proposes clips with reasons, so you are choosing between suggestions instead of scrubbing a timeline.
Cropping to 9:16 breaks shots
A centre crop cuts people out of frame. Soft Clipper tracks the speaker and moves the crop with them, and switches when the scene changes.
Captions are non-negotiable
Most short-form is watched on mute. Captions are generated from the transcript, styled once, and burned into every clip in the batch.
Scroll through the whole app
Six stops from a link to a folder of finished clips. Everything after the first one happens on your own machine, and every screen here is the real thing.
Pick a mode. Watch what it does to the shot.
Five ways to get a wide frame into a vertical one. This is the real behaviour, not a list of names — click through and see which one suits your footage.
Tracks the speaker and drifts the crop with them, then re-picks the subject when the scene cuts. The default, and right for most talking footage.
Keeps the entire frame and fills the space above and below with a blurred copy. The only honest answer for screen shares and slides, where cropping deletes the content.
Two speakers stacked, each cropped to their own face. What most interview clips use, and for good reason — look at what the centre crop does to this same shot.
A fixed centre crop with no tracking. Predictable and fastest to render — and on a two-shot like this one, it keeps the gap between the speakers and loses both of them.
Your camera on top, gameplay below — fitted, never cropped, because a game cut to 9:16 loses the half of the screen where things happen.
Any mode can be overridden per clip in the frame editor — drag the crop where you want it and the preview shows the real result.
Six caption styles, and the words light up as they are said
Every colour here is the one the app burns into your clip. Try them against a real frame rather than guessing from a swatch.
THISISTHEHOOK
The default. White, heavy outline, reads on anything.
Smaller and calmer, for talking-head footage.
The short-form standard — yellow survives any background.
Cyan on purple. Loud, and it suits gaming and music.
The spoken word scales up as it is said.
A solid box behind the words — for bright, busy frames.
Every style burns into the video itself, so no platform can strip it. Word-by-word highlighting is a switch, and works with all six.
What you get
AI moment detection
Finds hooks, punchlines and complete thoughts, and returns each with a score, a hook title and a ready-to-paste caption. Search your video in plain English too — “the part about pricing”.
Learn more →Smart 9:16 reframing
Face-tracking crop that follows the speaker, plus fit-and-blur, split-screen and centre modes when you want them.
Learn more →Burned-in captions
Word-timed captions in styles that suit short-form, burned into the video so they survive every upload.
Learn more →Highlight reels & teasers
Stitch the best moments from a long recording into a single trailer, ready for a feed post or a channel intro.
Learn more →Built for people with a back catalogue
$39 once, instead of $29 every month
Cloud clip tools charge monthly and meter how many minutes you may upload. Soft Clipper runs on your machine, so the only running cost is your own electricity.
| Soft Clipper | Typical cloud clip tool | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | $39 once | $29/month, forever |
| Upload limits | None — runs locally | Monthly minute quota |
| Your video leaves your PC | Only the audio, for transcription | Whole file uploaded to their servers |
| Watermark on free tier | No free tier, no watermark | Usually yes |
| Works offline | Cutting and export, yes | No |
Frequently asked questions
What does Soft Clipper actually do?
Is Soft Clipper a subscription?
Does it run on Mac or on a phone?
How many clips can I make?
Do I need an internet connection?
Do I need my own AI key?
Stop hand-cutting clips
Load a video, get back a set of vertical clips with captions. One payment, yours forever.