Guide

How to turn a Twitch VOD into YouTube Shorts

Your Twitch broadcast is wide and hours long; a Short is tall and up to three minutes. Here is how to get from one to the other, by hand or with a clipper.

In short: turn on Store past broadcasts, then cut each moment from the VOD into a 9:16 clip at 1080 × 1920, add captions and upload it as a Short. A clipper such as RipClip reads the whole VOD and does the finding, cropping and captions for you.

1. Make sure the VOD exists

• In the Creator Dashboard, under Settings and then Stream, turn on Store past broadcasts. It only saves streams from then on, not the ones before.
• Twitch keeps past broadcasts for 60 days for Partners, Prime and Turbo users, 14 days for Affiliates and 7 days for everyone else, per Twitch's help centre. Download a VOD from the Video Producer, or turn it into a highlight, to keep it longer.
• Clip your own broadcasts, or ones whose owner has said yes.

2. The manual way

Free, and fine for a clip or two. For a whole stream it means watching it back.

1. Watch the VOD back and note the moments that make sense without the rest of the stream.
2. Clip each one on Twitch (up to 60 seconds). Twitch makes a portrait version of every clip, cropped to keep your cam and gameplay in frame, and can post it to YouTube.
3. Or bring the clip into a video editor, crop the 16:9 picture to 9:16 around you or the action, and add captions.
4. Upload it to YouTube from the app as a Short, with a title that says what happens.

3. With a clipper (RipClip)

RipClip does the watching back: it reads the whole VOD and hands you clips you can still change.

1. Copy the VOD's address from Twitch (twitch.tv/videos/ followed by its number). Highlights and clips work too.
2. Paste it at app.ripclip.org. You get vertical clips of the moments that stand on their own, framed on the speaker and captioned word by word. Paid plans also write a title, post caption and hashtags for each.
3. Fix any clip in the editor: the cut, the captions, or (Premium) a split layout with your camera over the gameplay.
4. Schedule it to YouTube from the calendar. Posting switches on platform by platform as each one approves RipClip; until then, download the clip and upload it yourself.

A 2-hour stream uses 66 Horizon Units, and the free plan's 110 cover a 4-hour stream. More on clipping Twitch streams.

4. What makes a Short from a stream work

• Tall. 9:16 at 1080 × 1920, so it fills a phone screen.
• Up to three minutes, usually much less. Cut to the moment and stop when it lands.
• Open on the action. Skip the lead-up; the first second is the moment, not the setup.
• Captions on. People can follow along with the sound off, and they help with fast talk.
• A title that says what happens. Plain words beat inside jokes from your chat.
• Point back to the channel. Say where you stream and when, so a Short can bring people to the next one.