The best ways to turn a music video into Shorts, Reels and TikToks
There are four realistic ways to get vertical clips out of a horizontal music video. Each one trades time, control and cost differently. Here is how they compare, and how to choose.
A music video is usually the most expensive piece of a release, and it is horizontal. On TikTok, Reels and Shorts, where most people now discover songs, it needs to become several vertical clips. You can get there in four ways. None is wrong; they just cost different amounts of time and control.
What a good music video Short needs
Whatever method you use, judge the result by four things:
- It opens on the hook, not on the intro. The first second decides whether people stay.
- The artist stays in frame in 9:16. A crop that follows the singer reads as intentional.
- The lyrics are on screen, for people watching muted and for people learning the song.
- It looks like the release: same fonts and colors as the cover and the other pieces.
Option 1: editing by hand on a computer
You open the music video in a desktop editor, set a vertical sequence, cut the moments you want, keyframe the crop shot by shot so the artist stays in frame, and type or import the captions.
- Strengths: total control over every frame, transition and caption. If you are an editor, the result can be exactly what you imagine.
- Weaknesses: it is slow. Keyframing a crop across fast cuts and timing lyrics word by word can take hours per clip. Most artists don’t have that time in release week.
- Best for: a hero clip you will also use in ads, or teams with a dedicated editor. If you are thinking of hiring a video editor only for the weekly short clips, first see what an AI editor can take off your plate and when a person is still the right call.
Option 2: a phone editing app
Phone editors make it easy to trim, crop to vertical and add text or automatic captions, and you can post directly from the phone.
- Strengths: quick for one or two clips, free or cheap, no computer needed.
- Weaknesses: you still choose every moment and move the crop by hand. Automatic captions are usually tuned for speech, so sung lyrics often need a lot of correction. Keeping the same look across many clips is manual.
- Best for: a single teaser or a quick reaction post.
Option 3: a general-purpose AI clipper
AI clipping tools take a long video, transcribe it, pick “viral” moments, reframe to vertical and add animated captions. Most were designed for podcasts, webinars and talking-head videos.
- Strengths: very fast for spoken content; they find quotable sentences and handle captions and reframing automatically.
- Weaknesses: a song is not a conversation. Selection based on sentences can miss the chorus or cut in the middle of a line, and speech-tuned captions can struggle with stretched, repeated or layered vocals.
- Best for: interviews, podcasts and behind-the-scenes talk. To see how the best-known AI clipping tools compare for music, with dated facts, read our alternatives and comparisons.
Option 4: an AI tool built for music
This is the category TONTRIA belongs to, so take this section as our own description rather than a neutral review. A music-aware tool does the same automatic work as a general clipper, but treats singing as singing.
- Strengths: an edit mode that stays with the voice and keeps the singer in frame; karaoke captions that highlight each sung word; the option to ask directly for “the chorus” or “the bridge”; and tools for the rest of the release — lyric videos and release pieces from the same song link.
- Weaknesses: you still need to review every clip, and automatic transcription of dense mixes can misread a word now and then (you can correct it). If you need frame-perfect motion design, a desktop editor still gives more control.
- Best for: artists, managers and labels who need many clips per release without a video team. You can also describe the clip in plain words — “30 seconds of the chorus with karaoke lyrics” — to Milo, the video editor for musicians inside TONTRIA Clips.
Tip: whichever method you use, export the original file for each platform instead of downloading a post from one app and re-uploading it to another — re-uploads lose quality and sometimes carry a watermark.
How to choose
- You need one perfect clip and have an editor: edit by hand.
- You need one quick teaser today: a phone app is enough.
- Your video is mostly talking: any AI clipper will save you hours.
- You need several clips per song, every release, with lyrics on screen: use a tool built for music.
If you want to try the fourth option, turn your music video into vertical clips with TONTRIA: paste the YouTube link, choose “viral – sung” and karaoke captions, and review what it suggests. The free plan includes 30 credits to start (1 credit = 1 minute of video processed), one time, with no card. To connect your Shorts to the music video, the Premiere and the Official Artist Channel, read how to promote music on YouTube. For live shows, interviews, teasers and Canvas, see everything Clips does for artists.