Podcast Cutdown

A podcast cutdown extracts a self-contained storyline from a longer episode and turns it into a polished, standalone clip. It's one of the most popular ways to repurpose long-form content into shareable highlights.

What Makes a Good Cutdown?

Every strong cutdown follows a three-part structure:

1. Hook — The opening seconds that grab attention and make viewers want to keep watching
2. Storyline — The narrative core with a clear progression from setup to development
3. Payoff — A satisfying conclusion that leaves viewers feeling the clip was worth their time

This structure ensures your cutdown works on its own, even for someone who hasn't seen the full episode.

How StarZero Agents Creates a Cutdown

When you ask for a podcast cutdown, here's what happens behind the scenes:

1. Finding candidates. StarZero Agents scans the episode and identifies the moments with the most cutdown potential, gathering plenty of material to work with.

2. Validating the story. Each candidate is checked for the hook-storyline-payoff structure. Does it grab attention? Does the narrative flow? Is the ending satisfying?

3. Trimming to length. The AI removes filler words, tangents, repetitive sections, and weaker moments to hit your target duration while keeping the story intact.

4. Assembling the timeline. The selected clips are arranged on your project timeline with appropriate captions.

5. Rendering. The final clip is rendered in your chosen aspect ratio, ready to share.

Getting Started

Open Podcast Clips from the sidebar. If you don't have any clips yet, the create flow appears right on the page — paste a YouTube link (or Dropbox, Drive, LinkedIn, or a direct MP4 URL), or drag-and-drop a video file. You can also pick a video that's already in your library from the Choose from library tab.

Once you've selected a video, the configuration screen opens.

Brief Mode and Wizard Mode

The configuration screen offers two ways to set up your clips:

• Brief mode — A compact sentence that summarizes your settings in one line. Tap any highlighted parameter (clip count, duration, aspect ratio, pacing) to open a popover and change it. Great when you want to make a quick tweak and go.
• Wizard mode — Visual cards for every option, with a slider for clip count and larger previews for aspect ratios. Gives you a clearer overview of all your settings at once.

Switch between the two with the toggle at the top of the options area. Your choice is remembered for next time.

AI Decide

Turn on AI Decide and StarZero Agents picks the number of clips, the duration, and the pacing based on what it finds in your episode. The AI analyzes your content and decides how many clips to create and how long each one should be, so you get the best results without having to guess.

You still control the aspect ratio — the AI treats it as a fixed input since it depends on your target platform, not the content. Your other options — captions, background music, transcript auto-correct, and custom instructions — also stay active in AI Decide mode, so you can steer the output while leaving the clip structure to the AI.

Because the AI can produce up to 12 clips, enabling AI Decide requires enough credits to cover that maximum. You'll see a prompt if your balance is too low — upgrade or top up your credits to proceed.

While AI Decide is still working out how many clips to make, the results page shows an "Analyzing your episode…" message instead of a fixed row of placeholders — there's no clip count to promise yet. Each clip then appears as soon as it's ready, and the count settles once the AI has committed. In your list of podcast runs, AI Decide runs are marked with a gold "AI Decided" tag, and their clip count reads "Auto" until the AI has chosen.

Duration Options

When creating clips from the podcast creation screen, you can choose from preset durations or set a custom length:

• 15s–1m — Short and punchy clips ideal for social sharing
• 1–2m — Standard clips that cover a single topic
• 2–3m — Longer stories with more depth
• Mix — Varied lengths for a diverse set of clips
• Custom — Set an exact duration between 3 and 15 minutes using the slider

The custom option is great when you know exactly how long your clip needs to be — for example, fitting a specific slot in a YouTube video or matching a platform's time limit. If the total requested time across all your clips exceeds the source video's length, you'll see an overlap warning suggesting you reduce the clip count or duration.

Aspect Ratio

Choose the shape that matches your target platform:

• 9:16 (Portrait) — TikTok, Reels, Shorts
• 4:5 (Vertical) — Instagram feed (this is the default)
• 1:1 (Square) — Feeds, LinkedIn
• 16:9 (Landscape) — YouTube, X

Pacing

Control how tight the edits are:

• Original — Keep the natural pacing with every pause intact
• Medium — Remove some pauses and filler
• Fast — Tight, punchy edits with no dead air

Captions and Other Options

Captions are on by default using the Graphite style. You can change the caption preset or turn captions off entirely under More options (in Brief mode) or in the options panel (in Wizard mode).

Each caption style card has an edit button (pencil icon) that opens the caption editor — a live preview beside adjustable style controls. Tweak colors, fonts, and animations, then click Save changes to commit your edits as a Custom style card. You can also copy and paste styles to share a look between projects.

You'll also find toggles for:

• Background music — Add music to your clips
• Transcript auto-correct — Fix common speech-to-text errors (on by default)
• Intelligent compositing (coming soon) — Auto-stack media with smart layering and motion. This option is visible but not yet available

Custom Instructions

Want to steer the AI toward specific topics, vibes, or formats? Enable Custom Instructions to reveal a text field where you can write whatever guidance you like. A few examples:

• "Focus on personal stories, skip defense talk"
• "Only moments where the guest disagrees with the host"
• "Clips where only the guest talks, no host interruptions"
• "Stitch statements from different parts into one coherent argument"

A live character counter below the field shows how much space you've used out of the 5,000-character limit. If you go over, the counter turns red and shows how many characters to trim — the Cut my clips button stays disabled until you're back within the limit.

This is entirely optional — if you leave it off, StarZero Agents picks the strongest moments on its own.

Reviewing Your Clips

Once StarZero Agents finishes creating your clips, the results page shows every clip with a video player. The header displays a clean episode title along with helpful context pills — the run date, a link to watch the original source (with a YouTube icon for YouTube episodes), and a link to view the source in your StarZero library.

Share and Re-roll buttons appear at the top of the page so you can act immediately without scrolling through all your clips. The same actions are also available at the bottom.

From each clip card you can:

• Play — Watch the clip inline
• Edit — Open the clip in the full editor for manual tweaks
• Share — Open a share dialog with a QR code and a copyable link (or use the native share sheet on mobile)
• Download — Save the clip as an MP4

If you want a fresh batch, hit Re-roll clips. This runs a new independent pass — results may overlap or differ from the previous batch. Any custom instructions you wrote for the original batch carry over into the re-roll automatically, so the new clips follow the same guidance. The custom instructions field stays visible and editable, so you can tweak your instructions before re-rolling if you'd like a different angle.

Sharing the Whole Batch as a Public Page

The per-clip Share button gives you a link to a single clip. If you'd rather share all the clips from a run in one place, use the Share button at the bottom of the results page (next to Re-roll). It opens a panel with a Public link toggle:

• Turn the toggle on to publish a public page that lists every clip from the run in a grid, each with its own player. The link is copied to your clipboard automatically so you can paste it anywhere.
• Anyone with the link can view the clips — no account required. The page works as a social preview too: posting the link to platforms that support it shows an inline, playable preview of the first clip.
• The public page shows the source episode — including its thumbnail, title, and a link to the original (with an embedded YouTube player for YouTube episodes) — so viewers have full context on where the clips came from.
• Each clip card on the public page has its own Share and Download buttons. Clicking Share on a clip opens a dialog with a QR code and a copyable link to that specific clip's share page. There's also a Share clips button in the header for sharing the entire page link the same way.
• Turn the toggle off to disable the link. The page stops being publicly viewable.

This is handy for sending a client or collaborator the full set of clips from one episode, rather than sharing each clip individually.

Sharing a batch publicly is a paid-plan feature. On the free plan the Share button shows a lock and an "Upgrade to share your clips" prompt — upgrade to enable public sharing.

Free Plan Limits

On the free plan, you can generate up to 5 clips per run. Beyond that you'll see a prompt to upgrade. On the results page, free users can watch the first 2 clips; the rest are locked behind an upgrade prompt. Upgrading unlocks unlimited clips per run and full access to all generated clips.

How to Ask for a Cutdown

Besides using the podcast clips screen, you can also ask for a cutdown directly in the chat:

"Create a 90-second cutdown from this podcast episode about the startup journey"

"Find the best story in this interview and make a 2-minute cutdown"

"Create a cutdown focused on the moment they discuss hiring mistakes"

You can be as specific or open-ended as you like. If you name a topic, StarZero Agents focuses on that part of the conversation. If you leave it open, the AI picks what it thinks is the strongest storyline.

Getting Multiple Cutdowns

One episode can yield several great clips. Ask for multiple cutdowns and StarZero Agents will find non-overlapping storylines:

"Create 3 different cutdowns from this episode, each about 60 seconds"

Each cutdown will cover a different topic or moment from the episode, giving you a library of clips from a single recording session.

Tips for Better Results

• Let the AI explore first. Rather than dictating exact timestamps, let StarZero Agents find the strong moments.
• Try AI Decide first. If you're not sure what settings to use, let AI Decide pick for you — you can always fine-tune individual settings afterward.
• Review the proposed extract. Before rendering, look at what's on the timeline. Ask for changes if the story doesn't feel complete.
• Refine the hook. If the opening feels weak, ask StarZero Agents to try a different starting point. A strong hook makes or breaks a cutdown.
• Trust the trimming. The AI is good at cutting filler without losing meaning. If the result feels too tight, ask for a slightly longer target duration instead of adding content back manually.
• Re-roll for variety. If the first batch doesn't have the moments you want, hit Re-roll — each pass can surface different storylines.