9:16 · 1080×1920 · Under 60 seconds · Split long videos — Free, No Upload
YouTube Shorts are vertical clips of 60 seconds or less. The format is identical to TikTok and Reels, with one extra rule: stay under the minute. This page explains the Shorts specification and shows how to turn a long horizontal upload into a set of vertical Shorts, each within the time limit.
Make Shorts from any video — vertical, under 60 seconds — entirely in your browser, no upload.
Open the converter →YouTube classifies an upload as a Short when it meets two conditions: the aspect ratio is vertical or square (9:16 is ideal) and the duration is 60 seconds or less. Meet both and the video enters the Shorts shelf and the swipe-up Shorts feed; miss either and it is treated as a regular video. The recommended resolution is the familiar 1080 × 1920, so a clip formatted for TikTok is already formatted for Shorts as long as it respects the one-minute cap.
The minute limit is where a long source needs work. Rather than trimming a single 60-second highlight by hand, set the split length to 60 seconds and let the tool cut the whole video into Shorts-eligible clips automatically. A 10-minute talk becomes ten Shorts, each exactly within the limit and each reframed to 9:16. Choosing "discard" for the short last clip avoids ending up with a sub-second fragment that would not make a usable Short.
Most YouTube content is shot in 16:9. To turn it vertical, Cover crops to fill for a punchy full-screen Short, while Blurred background keeps the entire 16:9 frame inside a vertical canvas with a soft fill — a common style for clipping podcasts and gameplay into Shorts. Contain with bars suits screen recordings and slides where readability matters more than filling the screen.
YouTube re-encodes every Short, so aim for a clean source rather than an enormous file: 1080 × 1920 at 6–10 Mbps, 30 fps for talking content or 60 fps for motion. Export as MP4 where your browser supports it, otherwise WebM, which YouTube accepts and transcodes. The entire process — cut, reframe, encode, ZIP — happens locally, so your footage never leaves your device until you upload the finished Shorts to YouTube.
A vertical 9:16 video, ideally 1080 × 1920, that is 60 seconds or shorter to qualify as a Short.
Split the long video into 60-second clips and reframe each to 9:16. The converter does both in one pass and exports every clip in a ZIP.
Yes. To be eligible the clip must be 60 seconds or less and vertical or square. Set the split length to 60 seconds to stay within the limit.
Neither. It runs in your browser. You upload the finished file to YouTube yourself when it is ready.