openshorts
by mutonby
OpenShorts is a self-hosted tool that turns long videos into short, vertical 9:16 clips for TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. It finds the best moments, tracks faces, adds subtitles and optional dubbing, and can also make AI-actor marketing videos and YouTube titles and thumbnails.
- Stars
- 7.1k
- Licence
- MIT
- Runs on
- A small server
- Setup
- Moderate
- Language
- Python
- Age
- 311 days
What you can do with it
- Cut a podcast, webinar or interview into several vertical clips with automatic subtitles and face tracking
- Generate product marketing videos with AI actors from a website link or short description
- Create YouTube titles, thumbnails and descriptions, then schedule posts to TikTok, Instagram and YouTube
Could replace
- Descript
- Captions
Our suggestion based on what it does, not a feature-by-feature comparison.
Make money with it
You could offer a short-form clipping service to podcasters and coaches, turning their long episodes into a monthly batch of ready-to-post shorts.
An idea, not financial advice. Check the licence before charging for anything built on it.
Ways a business could use it
- Repurpose existing long videos into short clips for social media without paying for a clipping subscription
- Produce low-cost AI-actor product videos for a shop or local business instead of hiring creators or a studio
Can you use it commercially?
Free to use, change and sell, including in paid products. Keep the copyright notice.
Not legal advice. Read the project's licence file before building a product on it.
Getting it running
It is installed with Docker Compose on a machine with at least 8GB of RAM, and it downloads models on first run and needs your own API keys.
Follow the official instructions in the project README.
Things to check
- Needs your own API keys (Gemini, ElevenLabs, fal.ai), which cost money for some features
- Slow on CPU: about 5 to 8 minutes for an 8-minute video
- AI Shorts videos cost roughly $0.65 to $2 each in API usage
- Hosted version has a watermark and limits on the free plan
- Auto-posting relies on a third-party service (Upload-Post)
Who's talking about it
Checked 27 Oct 2026. Summary drafted by AI from the project's README.
