QWE AI Academy You record a 90-minute podcast. Great conversation, sharp insights, moments that would kill on TikTok. Then you sit down to make clips. Two hours later – three 60-second segments trimmed, captions added to one, the other two abandoned because the aspect ratio’s wrong.
AI tools now handle the whole pipeline. Transcribe, identify viral moments, crop to vertical, add captions, export. But which one? And what do they quietly not tell you?
The Problem: Speed vs. Control
Speed tools (Opus Clip, Choppity, Vizard): 20+ clips in under 10 minutes. Fast. Limited editing after.
Editor-first tools (Descript, CapCut, Riverside): Frame-by-frame control. Slower. Manual clip selection.
Most podcasters need both. Interview with a standout quote? Speed tool. Narrative episode where pacing matters? Editor-first.
Audio-Only Podcasts: The Hidden Trap
Actually, most “podcast clip generators” reject audio files.
Opus Clip, Vizard, AI Video Cut Maker, and LiveLink all require video. Upload an MP3? Error. You’re locked out unless you convert audio to video first – usually by adding a static image or waveform background.
Only a few handle audio natively: Flowjin, Podsqueeze, and some Descript tiers. Record audio-only? Start there.
Stuck with audio but want a video-required tool? Upload your MP3 to CapCut mobile, add podcast cover art as background, export as MP4. Five minutes. Unlocks every tool.
Speed Route: Opus Clip vs. Choppity
These two dominate the “upload and go” category (as of February 2026). Both analyze your episode, identify hooks, spit out dozens of vertical clips.
Opus Clip: 10M+ users. $12/month (Starter) or $25/month (Pro). Generates 20+ clips per hour-long episode – but 10 of those clips overlap significantly. Same moment, slightly different start/end times. You still watch them all to find the distinct ones.
The bigger issue? Editing. 2.4/5 Trustpilot rating. Most common complaint: “clunky editor” and “hard to make adjustments.” Tweaking captions and trim length works, but anything beyond that requires patience. Also: video-only. Audio podcasts won’t upload.
Choppity: Same pricing ($12/month Starter, $25/month Pro). Processing is slower – 5 to 15 minutes depending on episode length – but the editor is text-based. Trim clips by deleting words in the transcript. Faster than scrubbing a timeline.
Choppity generates 20-50+ clips per episode. Works with video (MP4, MOV, AVI) or YouTube URLs. A 30-minute podcast? 5-7 minutes processing. Two-hour webinar? 12-15 minutes.
Need volume and won’t edit much? Opus Clip generates faster. Will you tweak every clip? Choppity’s text-based editor saves time. Both require video input.
The 30-Day Deletion Rule
Flowjin accepts audio-only podcasts. Generates 10+ captioned clips, writes platform-specific social copy, lets you schedule posts to LinkedIn, X, and YouTube from one calendar.
Buried in the FAQ: “You can access your project for only up to 30 days after upload. After that, any drafted clips will be deleted.”
Generate clips but don’t export within a month? Gone. Downloaded clips are safe, drafted ones vanish. Not shown during upload – just in the fine print.
Worth pausing here. Most tools charge monthly but assume you’ll use them continuously. Flowjin’s 30-day limit means you can’t generate a batch of clips, step away for six weeks, then come back and schedule them. The work disappears. If you’re the type who records in bursts – three episodes in January, nothing in February – this bites you.
The fix: export everything immediately. Store files locally. You can re-upload later, but you can’t recover deleted drafts.
Editor-First: Descript for Full Episodes
Descript is the best tool for editing full podcast episodes before you clip them (as of early 2026). Text-based editing – delete a sentence in the transcript, it deletes the audio. Automatic filler word removal (“um,” “uh,” “like”). Studio Sound audio cleanup. Record directly in the app.
For generating social clips? Only 3-5 clips per long episode (per their own demo video). Fine if you want a few polished highlights. Posting daily? Not enough. You’d manually select more moments or switch tools.
Free tier available. Creator plan starts at $15/month.
Workflow many podcasters use: record and edit in Descript (or Riverside, which also has strong editing), export the polished episode, then upload that clean file to Opus Clip or Choppity for mass clip generation. Precision plus automation.
CapCut Mobile: Free for On-the-Go Clips
Editing on your phone? CapCut’s AutoCut feature is built into the mobile app. Completely free. Upload your video podcast, AI highlights engaging moments, splits them into clips, adds captions automatically.
Not as sophisticated as Choppity or Opus Clip. Fewer clips. AI sometimes misses emotional peaks. But for quick social posts when you’re away from your computer? Unbeatable. No watermark on the free plan either.
Limitation: mobile-first interface. Prefer working on a big screen? CapCut Desktop exists but doesn’t have the same AutoCut integration (as of February 2026).
What Happens After You Click “Generate”
The tool transcribes your episode. Analyzes the transcript for hooks – questions, punchlines, emotional peaks, topic shifts. Identifies segments that fit 15-90 seconds. Crops video to vertical (9:16 for TikTok/Reels, 1:1 for Instagram feed). Centers the active speaker in each frame. Generates captions.
Missing piece: understanding your brand voice. Knowing which moments matter to your audience specifically. Removing awkward pauses that are technically “content” but feel bad in a 30-second clip.
You still review. The time-saver isn’t “zero work.” The AI narrows 90 minutes down to 10 usable clips in 10 minutes. You spend another 15-20 minutes reviewing those 10, trimming two, discarding three. Better than 3 hours of manual scrubbing (according to benchmarks from Quso.ai, as of December 2025).
When Audio Quality Ruins Everything
Even the best AI clip tool can’t fix bad source audio. Background hum, inconsistent volume, muffled speech – all carry over into every clip.
Original recording has issues? Run it through an audio cleanup tool before generating clips. Descript’s Studio Sound, Adobe Podcast’s Enhance Speech, or Auphonic can automatically remove background noise and balance levels. Adds 5-10 minutes. Prevents generating 20 unusable clips.
One debugging session taught me this. Recorded an interview with a hum I didn’t catch during recording. Generated 15 clips. All had the hum. Went back, cleaned the audio, re-uploaded, re-generated. Should’ve done it first.
Most clip generators have a built-in “enhance audio” toggle, but it’s less powerful than dedicated tools. Audio is borderline? Clean it first.
A Workflow That Scales
This works for podcasters posting clips 3-5 times a week:
Record and edit the full episode in Descript or Riverside. Remove filler words, fix audio issues, tighten pacing. Export the clean episode as MP4 (if video) or convert audio to video with a static background (if audio-only). Upload to a speed tool – Opus Clip, Choppity, or Flowjin – and generate 20+ clips.
Review and trim in the same tool. Delete overlapping clips, adjust start/end times for any that cut off mid-sentence. Export immediately and store locally. Don’t rely on drafts – some platforms delete them after 30 days. Schedule or post directly if the tool supports it (Flowjin, Opus Clip), or upload to your social scheduler.
About 30-40 minutes per episode. Manual clipping would take 3-5 hours.
Platform-Specific Formatting
Every social platform has different specs. TikTok and Reels prefer 9:16 vertical, under 60 seconds, with captions. LinkedIn tolerates longer clips (up to 90 seconds) and square (1:1) works fine. YouTube Shorts caps at 60 seconds but allows 16:9 if you’re repurposing from the full episode.
Most AI tools auto-generate clips in 9:16 by default and add captions. Covers 80% of use cases. Need 1:1 for LinkedIn or 16:9 for YouTube? Export the same clip twice with different aspect ratios. Most tools let you toggle this before exporting.
The catch: some tools (Opus Clip) generate platform-optimized captions automatically. Others (Choppity) give you one caption style and you adjust manually. Posting to 3+ platforms? Platform-specific copy saves time.
What to Do Right Now
Grab one episode you’ve already recorded. Something recent but not critical.
Audio-only? Try Flowjin or Podsqueeze (both have free tiers or cheap per-episode pricing – Podsqueeze is $1-$2 per episode as of February 2026). Video? Try Choppity’s free plan or Opus Clip’s 7-day free trial.
Generate clips. Don’t edit yet. See what the AI selects. Moments actually interesting? Cuts clean, or do they chop off mid-word?
Five-plus clips usable without editing? Tool works for your content. Only 1-2 good? AI isn’t reading your episode well. Try a different tool or switch to manual selection in an editor like Descript.
Post one clip. Track engagement. Performs? Generate the rest and schedule them. Flops? The issue might be the moment you picked, not the tool. Try a different clip type – question, punchline, controversial take – and test again.
You don’t need perfection on day one. You need a tool and workflow that lets you ship clips consistently without burning 3 hours per episode.
FAQ
Can I use AI podcast clip tools if I only record audio?
Most require video. Opus Clip, Vizard, AI Video Cut Maker, and LiveLink all reject audio-only files. Workaround: convert your audio to video by adding a static image – podcast cover art or a simple background – using CapCut mobile. Then upload the MP4. Or use Flowjin or Podsqueeze. Both accept audio directly and generate audiograms with waveforms.
Do I still need to edit the clips after the AI generates them?
Yes. Light editing – trimming a few seconds, fixing a caption typo, discarding clips that cut off mid-sentence. The AI narrows 90 minutes down to 10-20 candidates in about 10 minutes. You’ll spend another 15-20 minutes reviewing those and tweaking the 5-7 you actually want to post. Still faster than 3 hours of manual work, but “1-click” is marketing, not reality. Opus Clip and Choppity generate the most clips, but many overlap. Expect to discard 30-40% as duplicates. One interview I clipped had 23 clips generated – only 8 were distinct enough to use. The rest were the same joke told from three different camera angles.
Which tool should I use if I want to post clips every day?
Opus Clip or Choppity. Descript only surfaces 3-5 clips per episode – not enough unless you manually select more. Opus Clip generates 20+ clips per hour-long episode and includes scheduling to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts directly. Choppity generates a similar number and has a better editor if you’ll tweak captions. For daily posting: edit the full episode once in Descript or Riverside, export clean, upload to Opus/Choppity for mass clip generation, review and schedule. Gives you 10-15 usable clips per episode. Enough for 2+ weeks of daily posts.