Clip a podcast into Shorts and Reels.

A clip is watched by people who have never heard the show. It has to make sense with nothing before it and nothing after it. That is the test for every candidate: a complete thought that a stranger can follow.

In an interview that usually means keeping the question with its answer. An answer that starts mid-thought leaves the viewer working out what was asked. The question is the setup and the answer is the payoff.

Then look at the first sentence. If the clip opens on a warm-up, a thank-you or a half-finished sentence, move the start to the sentence that states the point.

• A question and its whole answer.
• A story with a beginning and an ending.
• One claim, stated plainly, with the reason for it.
• A disagreement where both people get their say.

Let the thought set the length: long enough to finish it, and no longer. Cut the false starts, the repeated words and the side remarks, and stop at the end of the point, not a sentence later.

For the upper limit, YouTube's help pages say a vertical or square video of up to three minutes is categorised as a Short. Check the current limits of the other apps you post to before you plan a longer clip.

Caption every word. A podcast clip is all speech, and a viewer with the sound off gets nothing without the words on screen. Show a few words at a time, in step with the voice, and keep them clear of the speaker's face.

Then read them. Automatic transcription can get names, brands and technical terms wrong, and a misspelt guest name is easy for a fan to spot. Fix those by hand before you export.

Many podcasts are filmed as a wide shot of two people side by side. A phone screen is tall. Crop the middle of the wide shot to 9:16 and you get the table between them.

Crop to the person who is speaking, and move the crop when the speaker changes. Leave a little room above the head and space low in the frame for the captions. If the episode was recorded with a separate camera on each person, use the camera on the speaker.

Hold on the listener only when the reaction is the point, such as a laugh or a look of disbelief. The rest of the time the viewer should be looking at whoever is talking.

Give Mossclip the episode as a video. Paste a YouTube, Twitch or Kick link, or upload a recording as an MP4 or MOV. You can say what you are after in one sentence before the job, such as the guest's story or the argument about pricing. One job takes up to two hours of recording, and a longer episode is accepted by its link: you choose which part to clip.

It finds the moments from the transcript and returns them as vertical clips at 1080 by 1920, between 15 seconds and 3 minutes long, each with a title and every word captioned. The crop follows the person speaking. In one job a 59-minute interview gave 36 candidate moments, of which the best 9 were kept.

In the editor, delete the false start or the side remark from the transcript and the video loses those seconds. Captions come in nine styles and can be restyled or rewritten, so a misspelt name is a quick fix. Then export again. Clips stay available for 15 days.