YouTube Clips: What Are They & How to Create One (Full Guide)

YouTube Clips is a YouTube feature rarely talked about. Often mistaken for Shorts, it's actually a completely separate feature of the video platform.

So what are YouTube Clips? How can you benefit from it as a viewer or content creator? And how to create your own Clips? 

Read on to find out! 

What are YouTube Clips? 

YouTube Clips are 5-60 second clips that viewers or content creators can clip from any YouTube video. These then get saved to the Your Clips section of YouTube. 

Content creators use this feature to create teasers or trailers for their main videos. They ‘Clip’ the best parts of the video and share it with their social media network for video promotion. 

Viewers might use Clips for two reasons – to watch them later in the Your Clips section or to share their favorite part of any video with family and friends. 

You can share Clips on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, WhatsApp, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Embedding them on a website or sharing them via email is also possible.

Below is an example of a Clip taken from a video from our Riverside YouTube Channel. 

Why should you use YouTube clips?

How many times have you received a 20-minute+ video from your friend, only for you to ignore it because it’s too long? And if a minute or two of the video were useful, you’d have to watch the entire 20 minutes to find the valuable bits.

Or, in the worst case, maybe the video is a colossal waste of time altogether? (Which let’s be fair, it often is!) 

But what if you received a Clip, instead of a video? Wouldn’t you be more likely to watch it, considering it’ll take less than 60 seconds to do so? 

That’s why sharing Clips might be better than sharing the full video; watching one doesn’t take much time. And if the Clip is interesting, the viewer will be motivated to watch the whole video.

If you’re a creator, you can use the same strategy but on a broader, social media-sized scale. By sharing these Clips on social media, the public is likelier to watch them, given the low commitment level required. In this way, sharing Clips can be a fantastic marketing technique. 

How to create your own YouTube clips

Here’s how to create your own Youtube Clips: 

How to Create YouTube Clips on a PC

Step 1: Open YouTube in any browser on your PC. Sign in to your account if you aren’t already signed in yet.

Step 2: Go to the video you want to take a clip of. 

Step 3: Click on the Clip icon under the video player. This is in the same row as the thumbs up/down and share buttons. 

Step 4: The clipping box will pop up on the right-hand side. Here you can use the slider to clip the portion of the video you want to cut. The Clip can be anywhere from 5-60 seconds long. 

Add a relevant title to your clip, ideally one that’ll make a viewer want to watch it. 

Step 6: Click Share Clip to share on your favorite social media platform. You can also embed the clip on a website or send it by email. 

How to create YouTube clips in the mobile app

Step 1: Open the YouTube app on your mobile device. Make sure you have signed into your account. 

Step 2: Open the video you want to clip. The Clip icon is in the same row as the thumbs up/down row. Click on the icon to start creating the Clip. 

Step 3: In the Clip box that pops up, use the sliders to select the portion of the video you want to clip. 

Add a title, ideally one that hooks someone into watching the Clip. 

Step 5: Click Share Clip to share on your favorite social media platform. 

Note: Not all videos have Clips enabled. So if you don’t see the scissors icon, then the creator has disabled the Clips feature for their video. 

Where can you find your YouTube Clips?

You can find all the Clips you create by clicking on the hamburger menu icon in the top left corner of the YouTube page and then clicking on the Your Clips button. 

How to turn off Youtube Clips?

Here’s how to turn off YouTube Clips: 

Step 1: Sign in to your YouTube account.

Step 2: Click on your profile in the top right corner of the YouTube page. Then click on YouTube Studio from the drop-down menu. 

Step 3: Click Settings on the left-hand menu on the following page. 

Step 4: Click on the Channel tab. 

Step 5: Click on the Advanced settings tab. 

Step 6: Scroll down, and uncheck the Allow viewers to clip my content box under Clips.

Creating Clips automatically while recording with Riverside

There are better ways to create clips than using YouTube – and that’s by using Riverside’s Magic Clips. 

This Riverside feature identifies key moments in your recording using recent AI advancements and turns them into standalone clips perfectly optimized for various social media platforms. You can also choose between different aspect ratios for different social media platforms. 

All this can be done in just a click or two!

No more sifting through your videos in search of compelling moments; Magic Clips handles all the heavy lifting for you. 

You can also edit your clips manually. An easy way to do so is by using our text-based editor, where any changes you make to your recording transcription are reflected in the actual video. Here you can touch up your clip with video captions, a background, or even add your own logo. 

The best part of using Riverside is that it can record in crisp and clear 4K, guaranteeing that all of your videos will be in the best quality possible. 

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How to create Clips with Riverside

Step 1: Go to the Riverside dashboard and choose an existing studio or click ‘Create new’ to make a new one. Enter your Studio name, and click Enter studio. 

Step 2: On the next screen, check your equipment and when you’re ready click Join Studio. 

Step 3: Invite guests if you haven’t already and start recording. (You can learn more about the recording process here). 

When you finish, select ‘View recordings’. 

You can also select a previous recording from your dashboard. Simply hover over the studio your previous recording is in, and then select this same button. 

Step 4: Select the recording you want to take Clips from. Then click ‘Generate clips’ under the clips tab. (It’s hard to miss). Let AI brew its magic, and generate your YouTube clips or shorts!

Step 5:  Once your clips are ready, you can hover over them and click ‘Edit’ to preview and adjust them as you see fit. You can also choose between the aspect ratios of 9:16, 16:9, or 1:1. 

You can also select ‘Go to editor’ to adjust your long-form video or create your own clips from scratch. 

In the editor, you can:

• Edit your recording by editing your video transcript. Select text and click ‘remove’ to trim your video.
• Burn captions into your video and style them as you wish
• Remove unwanted silences at the click of a button
• Customize and adjust your layout and background.

Step 6: End off by polishing your video. You can use our Magic Tools to remove unwanted silences automatically, and you can also remove background noise. Visually, you can adjust your clip layout and even add your own custom background and logo. 

Step 7: Share the Clip to your favorite social media channels!

FAQs on YouTube Clips

How do I get YouTube Clips? 

You can find the Youtube Clips creation button below any YouTube video. It lies in the same row as the thumbs up/down and the share button. 

To access these Clips once you’ve created them, click on the hamburger icon in the top left corner of the screen. Then click the Your Clips button in the menu that pops up. 

What is the difference between a YouTube clip and Shorts video?

There is a difference between YouTube Clips and YouTube Shorts, although they are sometimes confused with one another. 

Shorts are like TikTok videos; they’re vertically-sized, highly edited videos with filters, cuts, transitions, etc. They’re 15-60 seconds long. 

Clips are 5-50 second long portions of a long-form YouTube video. Unlike Shorts, you can’t add filters, cuts, or other effects to them. In addition, they cannot be monetized, unlike Shorts. They are often saved for personal use or shared to increase the engagement of the original video. 

Are YouTube Clips monetized?

No, you cannot monetize YouTube Clips like YouTube Shorts or long-form videos. So if you’ve made a YouTube Clip, and people have watched it, those views don’t get monetized. 

How do you clip a YouTube video longer than 1 minute?

You can’t use YouTube Clips to make clips longer than a minute. However, you can use an app like Riverside to do so. 

With advanced AI, its Magic Clips feature automatically finds the most viral-worthy and juicy portions of any video you’ve recorded. If you want, you can even manually clip those portions of the video using the text-based editor.