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8 min
If you scroll through a YouTube feed at least once a week, you’ve surely noticed that some of the channels don’t even bother with making long-form content anymore. Yes, lengthy YouTube videos can hold valuable insights, but, according to the stats, there are over 900 million YouTube Shorts as of October 2025. Another quick fact is that while long-form videos number in the tens of billions, they are outpaced in daily uploads and views by Shorts.
Besides, YouTube Shorts represent a major share of new uploads and make up about 10% of YouTube’s total watch time, which illustrates their explosive growth and prominence versus long-form content.
If you’re thinking of creating Shorts out of long videos or have ever tried it already, you might’ve felt this: finding and cutting out the exact moment you need often feels like searching for a needle in a haystack. This is why we aren’t offering to do this manually; rather, you can use an AI tool for the job instead, just like you can use AI for creating Shorts from scratch.
Let’s start with the basics. Simply put, yes, you can clip someone else’s videos on YouTube. The platform lets you create short clips out of public videos, meaning that you can clip a YouTube video if its creator has enabled clipping permissions. The feature is available on desktop and mobile and allows clips between 5 and 60 seconds long.
You should know that this option has its limits, though. In addition to the ability to clip only public videos, the result stays on YouTube, which means you can’t download or edit it.
To bypass the restriction we referred to above, you can use AI solutions such as these.
To do the job, AI-powered tools typically analyze long videos (like watching them for you) and detect potentially viral moments based on speech patterns, facial expressions, scene changes, keywords, and sometimes even emotional tone.
Clipping a YouTube video takes a few minutes with AI Video Cut’s YouTube Shorts maker, an AI-powered online video repurposing tool. Instead of manually scrubbing through a video timeline, AI Video Cut watches the video for you and automatically detects key moments based on dialogue, emotions, and conversations in the original video.
To clip the video with AI Video Cut, you need to take these two simple steps: find the video you want to clip and upload it to AI Video Cut. Then, choose the desired setting in AI Video Cut, such as video output type, clip length, aspect ratio, and captions style.
You can either paste a YouTube link or upload a local file if you have the video on your computer or smartphone.
Quick tip: We recommend using captions in your short clips, as, according to the stats, about 21% of users watch Shorts with the sound off.
All you have to do next is just review the clip and either download it, or, if you’d like to make adjustments, regenerate the clip or edit the existing one in the text-based AI Video Cut editor.
Quso.ai is pretty similar to the tool we mentioned earlier, and it’s another way to clip a YouTube video. It supports importing YouTube links (or uploading files) and auto-generates candidate clips with captions, branding, and multiple size formats.
The process of clipping a YouTube video with Quso.ai also requires just two steps: you simply need to enter the YouTube video URL and wait until the tool automatically generates a few clips out of the original video. Then just upload the clips as Shorts or edit them.
Submagic is also an AI-powered tool that turns longer clips into Shorts, Reels, and TikToks, both from a direct YouTube link and local file import. It watches the content for you and analyzes which parts will work best on social media. 
All you have to do is type the video URL and click on the Magic Clips feature to let the AI extract short clip candidates from your long video. Thus, it will generate multiple clips, each with a preview, transcript, maybe a “virality” score, which you can either edit or download as is.
If you prefer a traditional way of clipping a video right on YouTube, here’s how you can do it directly in your browser:
You can use this method as an alternative to the third-party AI tools for sharing moments, but remember that you wouldn’t be able to download, save, or edit the YouTube video that you’ve clipped.
YouTube’s mobile app also allows you to clip videos, and it’s just as easy as on desktop:
Again, this feature is only available if the video creator has allowed clipping. Speaking of which…
Short answer: yes. YouTube creators who prefer to keep full control of their videos and prevent others from making clips with them can disable the clipping feature on their channels and specific videos alike.
Here are the steps you should take:
This will prevent other YouTube creators from making short clips of your YouTube videos, though they can still share timestamps using the standard video link.
Now that you know about the tools that get the job done, take a look at these tips before uploading your long YouTube video to AI Video Cut, Submagic, Quso.ai, or other similar solutions:
AI has made video editing faster and easier than ever. With any AI clipping tool from this article, turning a long YouTube video into a bite-sized highlight is no longer a technical chore but a simple two-step process. No matter what you need clips for: growing your YouTube channel, boosting the brand awareness of your company, or simply having fun, just remember that there’s AI for that that can do the job faster and less daunting.
