Find Shorts: a long video into a week of Shorts

A finished documentary, interview or tutorial usually contains more than one good video. Inside the long edit there are moments that stand on their own: a clear explanation, a surprising answer, a result shown on screen. The work has always been finding those moments, cutting them out, reframing them vertically, captioning them and exporting them one by one. Find Shorts in VLPremiere Pro turns that second job into a short workflow inside the same project.

This is a how-to guide to the Shorts workflow described in the VLPremiere Pro guide: how the finder scores passages, how the vertical reframe and safe zones work, and how a whole set exports in one batch.

The problem: a second edit for every platform

A long video is framed for a wide screen. A Short is not. The subject may sit at the edge of the frame, captions need to stay clear of the platform's buttons, and every clip needs its own title and description before it can be posted.

Done by hand, that means repeating the same small decisions for every clip. Done in the Shorts workspace, the long edit stays the source, and each short is created from it — reframed, captioned and packaged — without rebuilding the film.

Step 1: transcribe, then let Find Shorts score the film

Switch to Window > Workspaces > Vertical / Shorts and transcribe the sequence. The transcript is what the finder reads.

In the Shorts panel, press Find Shorts. Each candidate passage is scored for hook, clarity, payoff and novelty, and the list shows each candidate with its score, a title, its text and a still image. Clips always contain whole sentences, in English and Russian, so a short does not start or end in the middle of a thought.

A Minimum Score rule lets you set the bar before you start reviewing, so a long film does not produce an endless list of weak candidates.

Step 2: preview and adjust by words

Preview the candidates in the list and keep the ones that earn their place. If a passage starts a sentence too late or runs a sentence too long, adjust the start and end by words rather than by hunting on the timeline.

For professional editors, this is the review step that matters: the score is a first pass, and your judgement decides what actually represents the film. For beginners, the scored list is a practical starting point — you are choosing between passages the app has already found, not scrubbing an hour of footage hoping to notice the good moments.

Step 3: reframe to 9:16, and check the safe zones

Create Short makes the vertical version in 9:16, and you can also choose 1:1 or 4:5. The framing is face-aware, and Sequence > Auto Reframe Sequence makes the framing follow the action when the subject moves.

Before export, turn on View > Shorts Safe Zones for YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram Reels. The guides show where each platform's buttons and text will sit, so faces and captions do not end up hidden behind the interface.

Captions and packaging that travel with each short

Each short gets animated captions in your chosen style, with a preview in the real vertical shape before you export. That preview matters: caption size and placement that work on a wide timeline can crowd a narrow frame.

Each short also carries a title, hook, description, hashtags and keywords. Save Shorts Package writes JSON and CSV files for scheduling tools, so the set leaves the editor with the text a posting workflow needs, not just the video files. Created shorts are filed automatically into a Shorts Sequences bin, keeping the project tidy.

Step 4: create and export the whole set at once

When the set is ready, press Create and Export All. Every short is queued together instead of exported one at a time. If you publish from several long videos, Batch: Shorts for Several Videos handles several videos in one run.

That batch step is where the week-of-Shorts idea becomes real. One long video, reviewed once, can supply a set of vertical clips you can post across the following days — each one cut from whole sentences, reframed for its platform, captioned, and exported from the same project. The support article Turn a long video into Shorts in the help centre walks through the same steps inside the app.

For professionals, and for beginners

Professionals gain time where it is usually lost: searching, reframing, captioning and exporting are handled as one pass, while scoring, minimum score and word-level trimming keep the editorial decisions in their hands.

Beginners gain a route that does not start with a blank timeline. Transcribe, run Find Shorts, preview the scored candidates, check the safe zones, and export the set. Each step is visible, and each short can be reviewed before anything is posted.

VLPremiere Pro is a native Mac editor for Apple silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later, and it is available by subscription at vlpremier.com, with a free trial of the full Pro app for 3 days and no credit card required. Your projects stay yours, even if a subscription ends.