YouTube wants to rapidly increase the number of short-form “Shorts” videos available on its platform to better compete with TikTok. To help with this effort, the company introduced a new creator tool that converts existing YouTube videos to Shorts in minutes. The update, now available on YouTube’s mobile app, allows the video creator to easily select a portion of any previously uploaded video and then publish that portion as YouTube Shorts content.
The company was already converting vertical videos that users uploaded under 60 seconds into short videos, even though the content was originally uploaded as a standard YouTube video. Of course, not all creators liked the idea. Now, YouTube hopes that with the introduction of this new tool that allows them to cut interesting pieces from their longer videos, they will be more actively assisting creators in further expanding the Shorts library.
This decision and tool may indicate how worried YouTube parent Alphabet is about TikTok’s dominance in short-form videos. As we might guess from this tool, the company doesn’t seem to think that letting YouTube’s library of Shorts grow organically with new, original content uploads will be enough to compete. Instead, YouTube aims to leverage its existing long-form content to create more short videos. For example, this April, YouTube announced that any public YouTube video could be “remixed” to YouTube Shorts unless disabled by the creators.
The updated mobile app, the company says, allows creators to select a portion of their video up to 60 seconds long and convert it into Shorts content using the same editing tools they’re familiar with within the app. If their selection is shorter than 60 seconds, they will also be able to take additional video using the Shorts camera or add gallery videos to complement 60 seconds of Shorts content.
Since YouTube states that Shorts created using VOD (video-on-demand) content will automatically link to the original, it may be possible for creators to try to generate interest in their long-form content using this tool.
YouTube has long praised Shorts’ ability to draw viewers to creators’ long-form content, as part of what it calls the “rise of the multi-format creator.” In June, the company said that Shorts had reached 1.5 billion monthly logged in users. But the data showing that Shorts helped increase critical metrics like watch time or subscribers were not systematic data.
The company says the new Shorts creation feature is now available in YouTube’s mobile app for both iOS and Android devices.
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