How many postable shorts does an hour of recording actually contain, how long does cutting them by hand take, and what does that work cost you per clip?
Unlimited — runs in your browser
How It Works
How long the source video runs — an episode, a webinar, a course module.
Clip density varies a lot. Interviews yield more than scripted monologues; Q&A yields most of all.
Realistic clip count, hours of manual editing, and cost per clip at your hourly rate.
Fewer than the optimistic answer and far more than most people publish. A one-hour conversational recording typically contains eight to fifteen moments that genuinely stand alone — that make sense without context, open on something interesting, and finish cleanly. The rest of the hour is setup, tangent, crosstalk and material that only works in sequence.
The format changes the number substantially. A Q&A or interview yields the most, because the question-answer structure produces naturally self-contained units. A scripted monologue yields fewer, because it is built as a single argument where each part depends on the last. A webinar sits in between, with its best clips clustered around the parts where the presenter goes off-script.
The cost side is where this gets uncomfortable. Cutting one short by hand — finding the moment, trimming it, reframing it to vertical, captioning it, checking the captions, exporting — runs 20 to 45 minutes for most people. Twelve clips is a working day. That day is the reason most recordings produce two clips instead of twelve.
Why Use This Tool
Counts moments that stand alone, not how many 30-second chunks fit into the runtime.
The clip count is the pleasant number. The hours are the one that decides whether it happens.
Enter your hourly rate and see what a hand-cut clip actually costs you to produce.
Because a Q&A and a scripted monologue do not yield remotely the same.
Runs in your browser, no account.
This is a pricing argument in the shape of a calculator, and it works by using real numbers rather than flattering ones.
Reference
Moments that stand alone without context. Your mileage varies with how tightly the recording was run.
Typically 10-15 from a conversational recording, more from a Q&A, fewer from a scripted piece. The limit is how many moments stand alone without context — not how many 30-second segments fit in the runtime.
20-45 minutes for most people: finding the moment, trimming, reframing to vertical, captioning, checking the captions, exporting. Twelve clips is a full working day.
Usually the highest-return content available. The expensive part — recording something worth watching — is already paid for. Everything after that is editing.
It makes sense without what came before, opens on something interesting rather than a setup, and finishes on a complete thought instead of trailing into the next topic.
Structure. A Q&A comes pre-divided into self-contained units. A scripted argument is built so each part depends on the last, which is exactly what makes parts hard to lift out.
No. Fifteen weak clips do worse than six strong ones, because weak clips teach the algorithm your account does not hold attention. Yield is the ceiling, not the target.
If the numbers above say twelve clips and a working day of editing, you already know why your archive is not published. ShortsHero does that day's work automatically — transcription, moment selection, reframing, captions, export.
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Clips in this recording
10 – 15
Moments that stand alone
Manual editing time
4.3 – 9.8 hrs
≈ 0.9 working days
Cost per clip
$27
$352 for the set
This recording contains roughly 13 postable clips. Cutting them by hand is about 7.0 hours of work — most of a day — at roughly $27 per clip of your time.
Clip counts are moments that work without context, not runtime divided by clip length. The 20–45 minutes per clip covers the whole manual loop: finding the moment, trimming, reframing to vertical, captioning, checking the captions, exporting. Yield is a ceiling, not a target — fifteen weak clips perform worse than six strong ones.