Short-form video content is exploding right now, increasing 135% yearly. ⚡
As of 2023, this represents 2 billion monthly users and 50 billion daily views on YouTube Shorts alone. In addition, short-form content sees a 10-20% increase in conversions per dollar compared to traditional landscape videos.
Of course, short-form video content isn’t limited to YouTube. Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok multiply your audience and open up new potential markets. 😉
For marketers, this is an opportunity that simply cannot be missed. 💪
The consensus is already in, with 96% of marketers agreeing that the optimal length of a marketing video is under 10 minutes.
Repurposing long-form video content into short clips allows you to target new audiences without creating entirely new content. 😉
Automating this process through AI only sweetens the deal.
There are tons of video editing software on the internet that promise to transform your long-form content into short, shareable video clips. So, we decided to try one to see if it stands up to the test. Here’s our honest Opus Clip review. 🤝
What is Opus Clip?
Opus Cip harnesses AI to help video creators turn long-form content into short videos. Opus Clip is designed to save busy marketers and influencers time when repurposing content for social media. You can quickly create viral content and post it on YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram Reels.
Core features of Opus Clip
Automated Captions
85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound, making captions essential for maximizing your marketing ROI. Opus Clip automates this process for you, saving vast amounts of time for content creators. 💪
Opus Clip has an impressive accuracy rate of 97%. This is pretty close to Submagic's 98.9% accuracy rate, meaning very few manual corrections will need to be made. 😎
AI-Powered Curation
Opus clip uses an AI-powered algorithm to find the most exciting moments within long videos and separate them into shorter content.
Remember when you’d watch a video on 2x speed and manually pick out the most interesting moments? Intelligent automation now completely takes care of this process for you.
Virality Scoring
Once the AI has chopped up the best clips, each one is automatically given a virality score. This score helps you prioritize your workflows based on which videos are most likely to go viral. And let’s be honest, we all want our videos to go viral, right? 😉
This feature definitely gives users confidence and structure, but some have questioned its accuracy. The algorithm that generates the score is private, and several users have pointed to personal experiences of videos with lower virality scores that perform better than those with high scores.
Pricing
There are three tiers of access to the Opus Clip tool. Each is designed for a different type of user, so let’s take a look and see if any are right for you.
Free
Opus Clip offers a free version of its product, which is a great way to test out the software. The free tier comes with 60 monthly processing minutes, auto reframe, and AI captions.
This is enough to see if the tool is for you. However, this level is not for professional use, as you cannot edit videos, and exported videos will have a watermark.
Starter
The Starter package is designed for individual creators and costs $15 per month.
Your monthly processing minutes increase to 150, and you can now use the AI clipping feature and see the virality score. The starter level also allows you to edit and export your videos without a watermark.
Pro
The Pro tier of Opus Clip costs $29 per month or $174 per year.
This top-tier level upgrades your processing time to 3,600 minutes per month and allows you two users in your team workspace.
On the Pro level, you now unlock AI B-roll and multiple aspect ratios (9:16, 1:1, 16:9). You also get access to a social media scheduler and export to Abode Premiere Pro.
How does Opus Clip Work?
Opus Clip uses AI algorithms to ‘watch’ and understand long-form video content like podcasts and interviews. The system predicts which moments have the best chance of going viral. It then ranks these, automatically makes short clips from them, and allows you to export them to several social media platforms.
What Is Opus Clip Best For?
Opus Clip is best for making short clips from long-form content - but what exactly does this mean, and when is it most important to use it? 🤔
Google defines longform content as anything over 10 minutes and shortform content as everything under.
However, when we talk about short-form content, we specifically refer to videos under 60 seconds that can be shared on YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok.
As attention spans are getting shorter - dropping from around 150 seconds to 45 seconds over the last 20 years - content under 60 seconds helps you to target a much larger audience.
The market for long-form content like podcasts, interviews, and webinars is also rising. Generally, this content will far exceed 10 minutes, sometimes being hours for one episode.
People who consume this in-depth content usually listen while they’re doing something else, like exercising, doing housework, or driving. This means listeners often do not give the content their full attention.
By picking out the most interesting moments, creating a short video, and adding eye-catching subtitles and graphics, you can grab and maintain viewers' attention much better.
By clipping up different podcasts around the same theme, you can easily build a highly engaged audience around your target topic.
We Tried It: Opus Clip Review
Here’s a step-by-step guide of what I found when I signed up for Opus Clip and tested out what the software can do.
Sign Up
To get started, I signed up for the free trial of Opus Clip. As you'd expect, it was quick and easy to sign up. I logged in through my Google account, but you can also use your email address or Facebook account to get started.
Upload a Video
Once logged in, I was prompted to upload a video or attach a link from YouTube, Rumble, or another supported location. Each available link source is listed at the bottom of the screenshot below. You can also use a demo video at this stage.
Use a Demo Video
I was excited to test the product, so I used one of their demo videos, the interview with Elon Musk.
Clipping the Video
Once selected, Opus automatically clipped up interesting segments, turned them into short videos, and ranked them by their virality score.
I was really impressed by how quickly Opus clipped the video. However, this would disappoint me later when I uploaded my own video and had to wait a long time for it to process.
Seeing the clips arranged by a virality score is really helpful. Although I’m not convinced of the score's accuracy, it still excites me to find out what they have chosen for the most viral clips.
Viewing the Clip
Viewing a clip for the first time is really impressive. At a glance, everything has been done for you.
The auto framing works well to effortlessly pick the correct target and keep them within the shot.
The captions appear immediately and make the video feel complete.
Of course, you could export the video as is here. But I wanted to take a deeper dive with their editing features.
Editing Captions
Captions are crucial for grabbing and keeping the audience's attention, particularly when the viewer has the sound off. So, I was really excited to start playing around with the caption styles.
When I went to edit the captions, the first thing I noticed was that there weren’t many choices.
By comparison, Submagic has over double the number of built-in caption styles. This breadth of choice is essential for finding a caption style that most closely matches your brand identity.
While limited in choice, Opus’ caption styles are definitely inspired by the world’s most popular channels and should help most videos stand out.
If you can’t find the style you want, you can upload a custom font with a TFF or OTF file.
Changing the number of caption lines per page is a useful feature for customizing the feel of your short videos. I was given the choice between three lines per page and one line per page.
Unfortunately, when I selected three lines per page, only two were displayed, which was strange.
Matching the color highlights to your brand is crucial for a consistent marketing presence. Opus Clips has two areas for changing colors: karaoke colors and AI keyword highlighter.
This was confusing at first and led to me making some changes I didn’t intend to.
Emojis help keep your audience engaged and reading your captions, so I was excited to see how the “Auto emojis” function worked.
However, I was a little disappointed to see that emojis didn’t automatically appear, and I couldn’t find a way to manually add them.
Submagic allows you to choose your emojis line-by-line and even generate brand-new emojis using AI. This gives you full control over your captions and allows you to engage with your audience in trulynique ways.
Exporting Demo Project
It is important to note that you cannot save and compile the demo file you have edited. Because of this, I needed to create a new project and start editing again.
Cannot use VPN
Be aware that if you use a VPN for privacy or security, you must turn it off to create your own project.
Uploading a Video
Opus Clips makes choosing your video simple. You can upload a file from your computer or directly paste a link from YouTube, Rumble, or several other sources.
I chose to use a YouTube link for an interview with Denzel Washington
Upload Time
Processing a new video takes quite a long time. If you want to test the software quickly, upload a video not much longer than 10 minutes.
xporting Clips
Once you have finished editing your clips, you can easily download them to your computer or share them directly on social media by linking your accounts.
What I like About Opus Clip
Easy Signup
I liked how quickly and easily I could create an account on Opus Clips and start my free trial. ⚡
Start Quickly with Demo Videos
The choice of two demo videos made it easy for me to test out the editing features and decide if the product was right for me.
Increase Efficiency with Auto Clipping
I was impressed with how well Opus Clips breaks down long videos into short videos while providing useful information about the content. 💪
Virality Score
Even if the virality score isn’t entirely accurate, it helps to prioritize the videos. The virality score excited me to check out what was in the highest-scoring clip and analyze why it had the most potential. 😎
Upload Videos from Different Sources
I saved a lot of time by being able to paste a YouTube link directly rather than uploading a video from my computer. The range of sources I could link from also gave me a lot of choices.
Share Videos on Social Media
It was easy for me to download and share my videos to a wide range of social media sites simply by linking my accounts.
Cons of Opus Clip
Can’t Download Demo Videos
I was frustrated when I spent time editing the demo video but then found out I could not download or share this content.
Cannot Use a VPN
I use a VPN for privacy and security. I always find it frustrating when software tools demand I turn it off to use their service. 🤔
Long Video Processing Times
When I uploaded my YouTube link, I was surprised at how long it took to process. If you don’t want to wait, ensure you upload a video that lasts no more than 10 minutes to test out the software.
Limited Caption Styles
As a Submagic user, I felt somewhat restricted by the limited choice of native caption styles. Personalization is absolutely key for me when producing content for different audiences.
Auto Emojis Issues
I was disappointed to see that the auto emojis function didn’t work, and I couldn’t find a way to add them manually. I like to use emojis to add more fun to videos and grab people’s attention.
Unclear Editing
It needed to be clearer how to edit certain subtitle colors. Having to scroll down between karaoke colors and color highlights was confusing and caused me to make mistakes when changing colors.
Slow Playback While Editing
I found that playback was very slow while I was editing. This greatly slowed my editing workflow as I had to wait a long time to ensure my changes had been implemented correctly.
Opus Clip Review: Final Verdict
Opus Clip is certainly an impressive AI marketing tool that can help streamline your workflow as a content creator. It is impressive how efficiently it can separate clips from long-form content, and the virality score is a nice touch.
There are many ways to easily upload content to edit, which is really handy - even if it takes a long time to process.
For me, Opus's main value lies in repurposing others’ content.
However, if you create your own content, you will likely know where the interesting parts are, making it easy to clip by yourself.
For me, creating engaging short-form content really lies in how you edit it specifically for short-form platforms. This means things like captions, graphics, and sound effects. That’s why I’m going to keep using Submagic.
Submagic has a much wider range of in-built assets that you can add to make your videos more engaging. If they don’t have what you’re looking for, it has in-built AI tools to help you create it. ⚡
Like 40% of marketers, I struggle to stay up with the latest trends. 🤔Submagic stays on top of these for me and creates all the tools I need to implement them. 🧡
If you want to see how Submagic can help you transform your videos from longform content to engaging viral short videos, get started with your free trial today. 🤝
FAQ: Opus Clip
What is better than Opus Clip?
Submagic is better than Opus Clip for people who need to customize their short videos to match their audience and brand. Submagic offers more caption styles, graphics, and languages, allowing content creators greater freedom.
Does Opus Clip only work with YouTube?
No. Users can upload videos and links from various sources, including YouTube, Rumble, Zoom, and Google Drive. Videos can be exported to several social media platforms, including Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts.
Can you add music to Opus Clips?
No. There is no way to add music tracks directly on the Opus Clips platform. If you need to add a music track to your short video, you can use another AI-powered short video editor like Submagic, which allows you to add an audio track to your short video clips.
Why does YouTube use Opus Clips?
What languages does Opus Clip support?
Opus Clip supports 20 languages. Submagic offers AI-powered captions in 50 languages to reach a wider global audience.