The clipping workflow: from source video to posted clip in 30 minutes

A clip should take about 30 minutes from opening the source to submitting the link, and less once you have a rhythm. Here is the sequence, with where the time goes.

1. Read the brief first (2 minutes)

Open the campaign. Note the required hashtags, the music rule, whether the logo has to stay on screen, the minimum length and the platforms. Put them in a notes file for the campaign so you paste instead of remembering.

A rejected clip is a wasted 30 minutes. Two minutes here prevents most of them.

2. Watch the source fast (10 to 20 minutes per hour of footage)

Play the source at 1.5x or 2x. Do not edit while watching. Keep a note open and write a timestamp every time something makes you react: a laugh, a "wait, what?", a number, a strong opinion, a story with a clear ending.

You are looking for moments that work without context. A joke that needs the previous ten minutes is not a clip. A line that makes sense to a stranger is.

By the end of a two hour podcast you should have 15 to 25 timestamps. Star the five best.

3. Cut in batches (8 to 12 minutes per clip)

Open the editor with the source loaded and work through your starred timestamps.

For each one:

• Set the in point on the strongest word, not on the start of the sentence. If the line is "and that's when I realized the whole business was a lie," start on "the whole business."
• Set the out point one second after the last good line. Do not let it trail into the next topic.
• Cut the pauses and the filler inside the clip. Speech in a clip should be a little faster than speech in life.
• Crop to 9:16 with the speaker's face in the upper middle. If two people are talking, a split frame or a cut between them.
• Aim for 20 to 45 seconds.

Do all five clips before you caption any. Switching between cutting and captioning is slower than doing each in a batch.

4. Captions and the first frame (3 to 5 minutes per clip)

Turn on auto captions, then read them. Fix every wrong word; a wrong caption on a strong line kills the clip.

Style them big enough to read on a phone, in the middle third of the frame, and keep them on for the whole clip. Most viewers have the sound off for the first second.

Then the first frame. Add a line of text that says what the viewer is about to get. It is a promise, not a label. "Why he fired his best employee" is a promise. "Podcast clip" is a label. This one line decides more than anything else you do.

5. Export clean (1 minute)

1080p, vertical, no watermark, no outro. Turn off the editor's default ending and logo once in its settings so you never think about it again. A clip with another app's logo on it gets pushed down on the other two platforms.

6. Post to all three (5 minutes for three clips)

Upload the same file to TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. Paste the caption and the required hashtags from your notes. On Instagram write a real sentence with the topic in it, because it is read for search. Two or three topic hashtags on top of the required ones; skip the twenty generic ones.

Post within the same hour on all three. Each app runs its own test, so one clip gets three independent chances.

7. Submit the links (1 minute each)

Copy each post's link and paste it into the campaign on your dashboard. The view count is read the moment you submit and then on a schedule. Submit each platform's link separately; each is its own submission with its own earnings.

8. The next day: read the numbers (5 minutes)

Open Submissions and look at yesterday's clips. Anything that did better than the rest: go back to that part of the source and cut three more like it. Anything that stalled at 200 views: watch its first three seconds and be honest about why.

The time budget

For three clips from one source, posted to three platforms:

• Brief: 2 minutes
• Watching: 20 to 40 minutes, once per source
• Cutting: 30 minutes
• Captions and first frames: 12 minutes
• Export and posting: 10 minutes
• Submitting: 3 minutes

About 90 minutes for nine posts. Once the source is watched, each additional clip is around 15 minutes. That is why clippers cut in batches from one long video instead of hunting for a new source every day.

Tools

On a phone, CapCut does every step. On a computer, CapCut desktop or DaVinci Resolve, both free, go faster once you are past five clips a day because you can mark every moment and export them all at once. Read do I need editing software if you are choosing.