Zencastr Clips is a paid feature that transforms longer-form content into several shorter video clips optimized for a variety of social media platforms. Clips supports content in English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. AI Clipping uses AI to select the clips from your content for you, while Manual Clipping allows you to select the specific segments to clip.
Before requesting Manual or AI-generated clips, you now can apply post-production enhancements to your Zencastr-recorded videos. This functionality enables customization of elements such as aspect ratio, video layout, background, logo, and title and caption styling, ensuring your clips reflect your distinctive brand or style preferences.
Manual Clips feature is available on all paid plans. AI Clips is available on the Grow plan or higher.
In this article:
Before You Clip
Before you customize your video and generate AI clips, keep in mind:
The watermark can only be modified before the clips are generated.
The title and caption styling can be modified both before and after the clip generation process.
Word correction and removal from transcript-based editing can only be done before the clips are generated.
Uploading Your Video to Clip
To create clips from an external file, you first upload it to a session. Sessions are dedicated space for recording and organizing media files. You can choose to either create a new session to store just the uploaded file, or add it to an existing session that already has other recordings.
To upload a video to clip:
On your Dashboard, click the Sessions tab on the left sidebar menu.
Click the Upload in New Session button.
Click Choose File and select the file you want to publish.
For videos, the file type must be MP4.
The maximum file size for episode uploads is 50 GB.
Enter the session name.
Click Create.
You are taken to the Preview Page.
Once the file is finished uploading, click the Next button.
Click the Edit button to start customizing your postproduction enhancements.
In the top menu bar, click Audio & Video to customize the video’s aspect ratio, layout, background, watermark, and title and caption styling.
Adjusting Watermark
On the Audio & Video tab, check or uncheck the check box beside Watermark to remove the Zencastr watermark or add your own watermark/logo to the combined video.
To remove the Zencastr watermark:
Next to Watermark, make sure the box is unchecked.
To add your own watermark/logo:
Next to Watermark, make sure the box is checked.
Click the arrow (>) to open the watermark properties.
Click the Upload Watermark button.
Select a JPEG or PNG file from your computer.
Position: Select where in the video you want the logo to appear.
Scale: Adjust the logo size.
Opacity: Increase/decrease transparency levels.
Adjusting Title and Caption Styling
In the Captions section customize the appearance and position of the clip title and captions.
Adjusting Title
To adjust the title:
Next to Clip Captions, make sure the box is checked.
Beside Clips Captions, click the arrow (>) to open the clip captions properties.
Next to Title, make sure Show is selected.
Position: Select the position of the title - top, center, or bottom of the video.
For top or bottom positions, further adjust the title's placement using the Vertical, Left, and Right spacing sliders.
Font: Change the title’s font, size, and color.
Outline: Opt for an outline or box style for the title, modifying the outline color, size, shadow color, and shadow offset.
Adjusting Captions
To adjust the captions:
Next to Clip Captions, make sure the box is checked.
Beside Clips Captions, click the arrow (>) to open the clip captions properties.
Next to Subtitle, make sure Show is selected.
Position: Select the position of the captions - top, center or bottom of the video.
For top or bottom positions, further adjust the caption placement using the Vertical, Left, and Right spacing sliders.
Font: Change the captions' font, size, and color.
Outline: Opt for an outline or box style for the captions, modifying the outline color, size, shadow color, and shadow offset.
Highlight Active Word: Toggle on/off to determine how many words display in the captions at a time.
‘Off’ displays one word at a time.
‘On’ displays two to six words at a time, highlighting the spoken (“active”) word in a different color. When selected, you can define the color and scale of the active word.
Applying Selected Enhancements to Clips
Once you've defined and reviewed all the desired settings, to apply them to your clips:
Click Content & Clips and click the film strip icon in the upper portion of the screen.
On the Customize your Clips insert, under Select Clip Frame, make sure the correct aspect ratio video is selected under Short Form Clips and Social Feed Clips.
Note: If you have a Scale or higher and are customizing two separate videos with different aspect ratios, ensure both videos have been tailored to your liking.On the Customize your Clips insert, click the Enable button.
Click the Apply button in the top right.
Click the Next button.
Note: If you aren’t hosting a podcast on Zencastr, skip filling out the Episode Info on the right section as it is for publishing an episode to a podcast.On the Review and Confirm insert, review the summary of what you are getting and the credits cost.
Click Run Now to start the postproduction and clipping.
Result: A message indicates that clips are processing. When it completes, the necessary amount of credits will be deducted from your credits balance. Once clips have finished processing, they will appear on the Clips tab of your dashboard.