Articles / Tool guide · 4 of 5
OpenShorts: Turn Long Videos Into a Monthly Shorts Service
Cut clients’ long videos into 30–40 captioned shorts a month with a free clip maker.
Podcasters, realtors and coaches record hours of long video that never becomes short clips. OpenShorts finds the best moments and cuts them into captioned vertical videos. You sell the finished clips and the posting, not the software.
What OpenShorts is
OpenShorts is an open-source AI video platform, a free alternative to paid clip makers like Opus Clip. It has 5.3k GitHub stars, and its core is MIT-licensed.
- Finds the best moments: Google's Gemini AI reads the transcript and picks 3–15 clips worth posting.
- Vertical reframing: crops to 9:16 and follows faces, with split-screen for two speakers.
- Captions: word-by-word subtitles generated automatically.
- Dubbing: AI voiceovers in 30+ languages through ElevenLabs.
- Posting: publishes and schedules straight to TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
- YouTube helpers: thumbnail and title ideas.
It runs free on your own computer with Docker (a graphics card speeds it up), or through the openshorts.app cloud from $12 a month.
The service: done-for-you shorts
For every episode a client records, you deliver 8–10 hand-picked, captioned clips with strong opening hooks, scheduled to TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts. That is 30–40 shorts a month from content they already make, with no extra recording or editing on their side.
Why not just buy Opus Clip? People who aren't clipping their videos today don't want to learn how. They are paying for your judgment on what makes a good clip, plus the posting.
Who buys it: experts who already record long video but post no shorts, such as realtors, financial advisers, lawyers, coaches and podcast hosts.
Pricing and costs
The video suggests $400 a month for four episodes, about 3 hours of your time per client each month. For comparison, Opus Clip itself costs $29 a month, but that price is software only.
| Clients | Monthly recurring | Your hours a month |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $400 | ~3 |
| 10 | $4,000 | ~30 |
Your costs are a few cents per video in AI usage, plus the posting service.
How to find clients
- Find companies posting jobs for a "video editor" or "short-form editor"; they already want this.
- Check podcast charts for shows with 20+ episodes and no Reels or Shorts.
- Contact the host, founder or CEO and send three free clips from their latest episode as proof.
Getting started
- Get a free Google Gemini API key (or use a local AI model instead).
- Run OpenShorts with Docker Compose.
- Clip one episode of a podcast you like and use the results as your portfolio.
Watch-outs
- Get written permission to edit and post the client's content, and confirm who owns the clips.
- Always review AI picks by hand; one awkward clip can embarrass a client.
- Extra features need their own paid accounts: fal.ai for AI actors, ElevenLabs for voices and Upload-Post for publishing.
- The
cloud/folder uses a source-available commercial license, not MIT.
Sources
- OpenShorts on GitHub, checked September 28, 2026
- 5 Github repos that print $$$, Corey Ganim (offer, pricing and client-finding ideas)