How to use Crowdcut

Getting started

Try the free demo first

You can see Crowdcut work on your own content without an account.

1. On the home page, type your channel name or paste a link to a past stream or video. YouTube, Twitch and Kick links work.
2. Enter your email and press Get 2 free clips.
3. We email you two captioned vertical clips, about 30 seconds each, usually within 15 minutes.

• Long streams are fine (up to 12 hours). We pick the liveliest 30 minutes and clip from that.
• The demo needs a finished video. Live streams, single clips and channel pages without a past broadcast are refused with a message telling you what to paste instead.
• Demo clips carry a small "made with crowdcut.studio" mark. On the results page you get one free Try another look to re-cut the same clips in another style.
• One demo per email and per browser every 30 days. The results page stays up for 14 days.

Sign up

1. Go to Sign up, enter your name, email and a password.
2. New workspaces start with no plan yet. The dashboard shows Pick a plan to render your first clips, or the free trial offer below. Nothing renders until one of those is active.
3. Confirm your email from the link we send, so we can tell you when clips are ready.

The 3-day free trial

Press Start free trial on the dashboard (or after your demo). A card is required, but you pay $0 today.

• What's included: 100 clips in total, up to 40 a day (more after midnight UTC), and 1 watched live channel. Trial clips end with a short "Made with Crowdcut" end card. Nothing is drawn over your video.
• When billing starts: when the 3 days are up, Clipper starts and your card is charged $14.50 for the first month, then $29/month until you cancel. We email you a reminder 24 hours before the charge.
• Cancel to pay nothing: Settings, Billing, Manage billing / cancel, before the trial ends. The trial keeps working until its end date.
• Can't wait? Upgrade now ends the trial today: the first month is charged now, you get a fresh set of clips and the end card goes away.
• Clipper doesn't include live channels, so live clipping stops when the trial becomes Clipper. Creator and up include live.
• One trial per person, card and workspace.

Plans and limits

Every plan is monthly with a hard cap on clips. A "clip" is counted the first time it reaches Review. Re-rendering it (new hook, new style, trims, cam fixes) is free. Deleting a clip doesn't give the clip back.

• Your first month is 50% off and comes with 50% more clips. After that the plan renews at full price.
• Yearly billing is 10 months' price for 12.
• Need more than Growth? Email contact@crowdcut.studio about an Agency plan.
• When you run out, new clips wait in the Paused tab and render once you upgrade or your month resets.

Projects

A project is one channel or creator you clip for. It holds a default style, watched live channels, reference videos, a brief and an autopilot setting. Go to Projects, then New project. If you start a job without one, we create "My clips" for you.

Getting your video in

There are three ways. Uploads and links start from New clips. Livestreams are set up once on a project and then run by themselves.

1. Upload a file

1. Open New clips.
2. Drag your video onto Drop a video or click to choose, or click it to pick a file.
3. Pick the project, how many clips and how long (see New clips options), then press Find and cut clips.

• Formats: mp4, mov, mkv, webm, m4v, ts, avi, mpg and mpeg.
• Size: up to 4 GB per file. Keep the tab open until the upload bar finishes.
• Length: up to 4 hours. For anything longer, paste a link instead: long links are processed in pieces.
• The file needs a video track. Audio-only files (a podcast mp3) are refused.
• Uploads have no chat replay, so moments are picked from loudness, what is said, and the AI ranking.

2. Clip a livestream

Watch a channel and Crowdcut clips it while it streams, from the moments chat reacts to. Live channels need a plan that includes them: Creator (1), Starter (3), Growth (10), and the free trial (1). Clipper doesn't include live channels.

1. Open Projects and pick a project.
2. Under Watched live channels, choose the platform, type the channel name (for example kaicenat) and press Watch.
3. The row shows Checking the handle… and then found. If it never says found, check the spelling.
4. Make sure the project shows Live clipping · beta as on. Turn off stops live clips for that project without removing the channel.

Twitch

• While the channel is live we read its chat and record the stream. When chat spikes (laughs, hype, shock, "CLIP IT"), we cut that moment from our recording.
• When clips arrive: the cut is ready about 20 to 40 seconds after chat goes off, then it renders and lands in Review. Turn on the clip email in Settings, Notifications for an hourly digest.
• The VOD wait: if our recording doesn't hold the moment, the clip waits for Twitch's VOD instead. Its card says Waiting on VOD and how long it has waited. Some channels only publish the VOD after the stream ends, so a clip can wait until about 45 minutes after the end. If no VOD ever appears (past broadcasts off, sub-only, deleted), the clip fails with the reason on its card; press Try again to look again.
• Turn on Store past broadcasts in your Twitch settings so the VOD backup works.
• We also pick up moments many viewers clipped on Twitch.
• At most 4 live clips per channel per hour (more only when chat goes truly wild), and never past your month's clips.

YouTube

YouTube live chat isn't read yet. A watched YouTube channel is checked for moments viewers timestamp in the comments of new uploads. To clip a YouTube stream properly, wait until it ends and paste the stream's link.

Kick and the chatroom id

How Kick live works. Kick has no clips feature, so the signal is chat. Add your Kick channel under Watched live channels like a Twitch one. While you're live we read your chat, and when it spikes (laughs, hype, shock, "CLIP IT") we cut that moment from our own recording of the stream. If our recording doesn't hold the moment, we cut it from the VOD Kick keeps of your broadcast. Clips land in Review about a minute after chat goes off. The same limits as Twitch apply: at most 4 live clips per channel per hour, never past your month's clips.

Keep VODs on. Kick's VOD of the stream is the backup. If VODs are off for your channel and our recording misses a moment, that clip fails with the reason on its card.

Why the chatroom id matters. To read a Kick chat we need the channel's chatroom id, a number that isn't the same as your channel name. We look it up from Kick when you add the channel, and the row shows chatroom and the number. If Kick doesn't answer, the row says so and asks for the id instead: without it we can't read chat, so no live Kick clips. You can change it later with edit on the row.

How to find your Kick chatroom id:

1. In a browser, open https://kick.com/api/v2/channels/yourname, with your Kick channel name in place of yourname.
2. You'll see a page of text. Use your browser's Find (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F) and search for "chatroom".
3. Right after it is "id": and a number, like "chatroom":{"id":5389830. That number is your chatroom id.
4. Back in the studio, paste it into the Kick chatroom id box on the channel's row and press Save.

Kick VOD links you paste don't come with a chat replay, so those clips are picked from loudness, what is said, and the AI ranking. The Chat spike z setting under detection tuning controls how big a chat jump has to be on a live stream, Kick or Twitch.

3. Paste a link

1. Open New clips.
2. Paste the link into Paste a link.
3. Pick your options and press Find and cut clips.

• Supported: Twitch VODs and clips, Kick VODs, YouTube videos, streams and Shorts, TikTok, Instagram, and direct links to a video file (.mp4). The link has to be public.
• Long VODs: anything over 2 hours is worked through in 30-minute pieces. Clips start arriving in Review as soon as the first piece is done, long before a marathon stream is finished.
• A series: paste several links at once (separated by spaces or new lines, up to 20) and they're walked one after another as one job. Handy for a split streamathon or a week of streams.
• Chat helps: for Twitch VODs (and YouTube streams up to 4 hours) we read the chat replay, so the moments chat reacted to rank first.
• Links to private or local addresses are refused. If a video is too long for one link you'll see the limit in the error.

New clips options

After you press Find and cut clips you land on the job's clips. A one-hour VOD takes a few minutes to analyse. Clips show up as they render; a queued job can be canceled from the dashboard.

Advanced: detection tuning

On a project page, Advanced — detection tuning holds four numbers for watched channels: Min clippers (Twitch) (how many different viewers must clip the same moment), Max per scan, Lookback (min) and Chat spike z (lower finds more, smaller chat spikes). Leave them alone unless you're getting too many or too few live clips.

Styling

A style is the layout, caption look, hook treatment and edit recipe together. Set a default per project (project page, Default style), override it per job, or switch it per clip in the clip's Look panel. Switching a finished clip re-renders it in seconds, for free.

Styles

Custom styles (Growth and up): on Styles, press Tweak and save on a preset or New custom style, change the settings, add a voice brief for hooks, and save. Custom styles show up everywhere a style can be picked.

Layouts and output shape

Change these per clip under Tweak captions in the clip view (or when making a custom style):

• Framing: Letterbox + card space (whole picture on black, room for a hook card), Blur fill (whole picture over a blurred copy), Centre crop (fills the screen, cuts the sides), Facecam stack (your cam on top, zoomed gameplay below; this is what Gaming Stack uses).
• Output shape: Vertical 9:16 (TikTok, Reels, Shorts), Square 1:1, or Landscape 16:9.

With Facecam stack, we find your cam automatically per clip. If the boxes are off, fix them in Edit cams.

Captions

• Caption mode per clip, in the Look panel: Spoken + action or Hook card + captions.
• Tweak captions in the clip view: Highlight colour (or none), Text colour, Highlight mode (colour the word or box it), Position, Size, Words at once, Case (UPPERCASE or as spoken), and Caption motion (still, pop, bounce, shake on loud words). Press Apply and re-render.
• Fix words: if a word was misheard, press Fix words, correct it, keep the same number of words so the timing stays lined up, and press Save and re-render.
• Caption language: set it in the project's brief (Caption language). It's used when new clips are transcribed. Captions are at their best in English today; see captions in the wrong language.

Hooks

The hook is the line on screen at the start that makes people stay. We draft a few for every clip; you pick or write the one that ships.

• Hook treatment (Tweak captions): White card, Dark card, Rounded box, Outlined text, Amber banner, or None (caption only).
• How they're written: the AI reads the transcript, stills from the clip and your brief. Set the tone in the brief's Hook voice and Example hooks you like, and turn emoji on or off with emoji in hooks.
• Editing a hook is covered in Edit hooks.

Auto-edit (recipes)

Every clip gets an edit plan from its recipe: cuts, zooms, shakes and sounds placed on the moment. Pick the recipe per clip in the Edit section, or for many clips at once with Recipe for all shown in Review.

• Edit intensity (0 to 1) turns the recipe up or down.
• Profanity: Mute the word, Duck the word (lower it) or Leave audio. Captions mask swear words when mask profanity in captions is on in the brief (it is by default). Add words under Also mask or protect them with Never mask.
• On every recipe except Clean, the AI may add up to four extra touches (a sticker on a word, a sound on a beat).

Effects come from the recipe and intensity, not from the brief. Writing "make it engaging" in the brief won't add zooms. Pick Standard or Loud for that. More in The brief.

End card and watermark

• Follow card: with Podcast, Standard or Loud, clips of 10 seconds or more end on a one-second @yourhandle card. It only appears when Creator handle is set in the project's brief.
• Free trial end card: trial clips end with a short "Made with Crowdcut" outro. It goes away once you're on a paid plan.
• Watermark my clips: Settings, Workspace. Adds a small Crowdcut mark on the left, clear of captions and the app buttons, to clips rendered from then on. It's off by default. Turn it on or off for one clip in its Look panel (Workspace, On, Off).

Reference material

Tell Crowdcut about the creator and the audience, and it picks and writes better. All of this lives on the project page.

The brief: what it does, and what it doesn't

The Generation brief card on a project (and This job's brief on New clips, for one video) is read by two things: the AI that picks the moments and the AI that writes the hooks. It does not drive the editing effects.

Briefs that help, and ones that don't:

Creator channels and profiles

When a project watches a channel (or its brief lists twitch:name or youtube:@handle under Community sources), we read that channel's public page: name, bio, the games it usually streams, recent stream titles and follower count. It shows on the project page under What we know about this channel, refreshes daily, and has a Refresh button.

The moment picker and the hook writer use it to fill gaps (who the creator is, what they play). Anything you type in the brief wins over it. If something is wrong or missing, correct it in Notes for the editor.

Community sources

In the brief, add up to 8 sources under Community sources, written exactly like this:

• r/LivestreamFail for a subreddit's top posts of the week,
• twitch:channelname for that channel's top clips (with the titles viewers typed) and past broadcasts,
• youtube:@handle for a channel's recent uploads.

We summarise what people are talking about and hand it to the moment picker and hook writer. Press Preview context to see what came back. In the clip view, Context used shows the lines a clip's hooks were written with. Load trending topics adds topics from YouTube's trending chart.

Teaching

Show Crowdcut clips you like and it copies how they look. Show it clips that did well next to the stream they came from and it learns how they were cut.

Reference videos (teach it a look)

Plan: Growth and up (5 references on Growth).

What to give it: one finished short-form clip whose look you want, yours or anyone's. On the project page under Reference videos, drop an mp4 or mov (about 3 minutes max), or paste a TikTok, Shorts or other link and press Analyse. From a link we read the first 3 minutes.

What it learns:

• The framing (vertical, letterbox or blur fill), from the video's shape and black bars.
• The caption look, from a few frames: position, case, colours, the word highlight, outline, the hook treatment, emoji and action labels.
• A short voice brief for hooks, from about a minute of what's said.

How long: it shows Reading frames and transcript. and is usually ready in a minute or two, then shows the closest preset and how many settings it learned.

Using it: Apply to this project (new clips use the look), Save as custom style, or pick it on New clips under Influence with reference videos for one job. Deleting a reference keeps what was already applied.

Training data (teach it how good clips were cut)

Open Library and scroll to Training data.

What to give it: a clip that did well and the stream it came from.

• Clip link: a Twitch clip, YouTube video, Short or clip, TikTok, Instagram Reel or an mp4.
• VOD link: the full stream. Optional for Twitch clips and YouTube clips, which know where they came from.
• Roughly when in the VOD: like 2:41:00. Add it for streams over an hour, so we search near there.
• Views it got, and Notes on why it worked.
• No VOD link? Give the streamer's archive channel and a date range to search.

Press Add reference pair. How long: a 30-second clip takes about a minute. The status goes from queued to aligning to aligned, with where it was found.

What it learns: exactly where the clip was cut from, what chat and the volume did around it, and how it was edited: how much setup before the payoff, jump cuts, zoom, added music or sound, caption look and pace.

Once a few pairs are aligned, a What your references do box sums them up. Press Make this project's clips like my references to set that project's lead-in, clip length, cuts, zoom, music and caption look from them.

Teach it your memes

Upload stickers, images or short videos in Library, then press Label it. Pick the feelings it expresses, how it's used (cutaway, picture in picture or sticker), and the lines that call for it. Suggest with AI drafts the fields for you. The editor then reaches for it on a matching line or mood.

Video editor

The Review screen

Review holds every clip, newest first, with tabs: Review, Approved, Published, Queue (still rendering or waiting on a VOD), Paused (over your clip cap), Rejected, Failed and All.

• Each card plays the clip, shows why it was picked, and has a hook box with suggestions underneath. Press Approve or Reject.
• Keyboard: J/K move, A approve, X reject, Enter open, Space play, S select.
• Select lets you tick several clips (Shift-click for a range) and delete them for good.
• Click a clip to open the full clip view: the player, hook, edit timeline, trim, cams, Look panel and publishing.
• Review this clip (where shown) gives an AI score for the hook, opening, pacing, captions and length, with fixes and hook ideas.

Edit hooks

1. Type in the hook box, or tap one of the suggestions under it.
2. A preview of the new hook shows over the video.
3. Press Approve (or Cmd/Ctrl+Enter). The clip re-renders with your hook burned in, in seconds.

Already approved? Change the hook and press Save hook and re-render. Styles with hook treatment "None" don't burn a hook in.

Trim

In the clip view under Trim, use − and + next to Start and End (half a second per press, up to 15 seconds either way). A negative start begins earlier; a positive end runs longer. Press Re-cut: the clip is cut again from the original, captions are redone, and the edit plan is rebuilt.

Edit cams

Clips in a facecam layout (Gaming Stack, or Framing set to Facecam stack) show a Facecam layout panel with a still from the original video and coloured boxes on it.

• Blue boxes (CAM1, CAM2) are your facecam(s). What's inside goes in the top band of the finished clip. One cam fills the band; two sit side by side.
• The green box (GAME) is the gameplay. What's inside fills the rest of the clip below the cam, zoomed to fit.

1. Move a box: drag it from anywhere inside.
2. Resize a box: drag the small white square at its bottom-right corner.
3. Drop a cam you don't want: press the ✕ in its top-right corner (one cam always stays). If we suggest a single cam, Use 1 cam (suggested) does it for you.
4. Press Save layout and re-render. Reset goes back to what we detected.

Draw the blue box tight around the face, and the green box around the part of the game people need to see. Re-rendering after a cam fix is free.

Edit the timeline

The Edit section shows the clip's recipe and a timeline of everything in it, on lanes for video, overlays, text and audio.

• Apply recipe after changing Recipe, Intensity, Profanity or Caption motion. Regenerate plan plans a fresh edit; Reset my changes drops yours.
• Click a chip to change, switch off or remove it. Drag a chip to move it in time.
• Split cuts the piece under the playhead. Select a piece to change its speed, add a transition, move it earlier or later, or delete it.
• Add drops in a sticker, chat messages, a sound, a cutaway or picture in picture, text, a badge, a voiceover, a zoom, a freeze frame, a filter, a mute, or a music bed. Upload adds your own file. Stickers, text and picture in picture can be dragged on the video itself.
• Undo and redo with the arrows (Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Shift+Z). Duplicate makes a copy to edit separately. Shape changes 9:16, 1:1 or 16:9. Wide view gives the timeline the whole screen.

Changes show straight away on the timeline. Press Render preview to see them in the video (a fast 720p preview), or just approve, which renders the final quality.

Re-render

Every change re-renders the clip by itself: approving a new hook, switching style or caption mode, fixing words, tweaking captions, trimming, saving cams, changing the watermark, or rendering a preview. The card says it's re-rendering and refreshes when done, usually in seconds. Re-renders never count against your clips. A failed render has Retry render.

Download, export and post

• MP4 under the player downloads the clip.
• Export pack downloads the clip with its title, description and tags, ready to upload anywhere.
• Post caption and tags lets you edit the description, keywords, hashtags and YouTube title, and copy the caption for YouTube, TikTok or Instagram.
• TikTok: connect an account in Settings, Connected accounts. Approved clips get Post to drafts: the clip lands in your TikTok drafts inbox and you press post in the app. Nothing goes public by itself. Creator and up can Schedule a time; scheduled posts are listed under Schedule.
• YouTube: use the Export pack, upload it yourself, then press Mark as posted so your stats stay right.
• Autopilot (project page): Review every clip (the default) or Draft to TikTok as they render, which approves each new clip with its top hook and sends it to your TikTok drafts. It needs a connected TikTok account.

Account and billing

How long clips are kept

Finished clips are kept 45 days after their last render or edit. In the last 7 days the card says Deletes in N days — download to keep. After that the video file is removed (Video removed after 45 days), but the title, hook, stats and post links stay. Editing or re-rendering a clip restarts its 45 days. Download anything you want to keep.

Billing, upgrading and cancelling

• Everything is in Settings, Billing. Only the workspace owner can change it.
• Upgrade to or Switch to another plan applies right away. The difference is prorated on your card; moving down leaves a credit.
• Manage billing opens the payment portal for your card, invoices and cancelling.
• Cancel or pause: pause for 30 days (nothing billed, everything kept, it restarts by itself, or Resume now), or continue to cancel. A canceled plan works until the end of the period you paid for.
• If a payment fails, rendering pauses until the card is updated.

Team

On Team, owners create invite links: owners run billing and team, editors make and post clips, reviewers approve and export. Scope limits a seat to certain projects. Seats per plan are in the plans table.

Support

Email contact@crowdcut.studio. Include your workspace name and the clip or job number (the # number on the card) and we can find it quickly.

FAQ and fixes