mutonby / openshorts
A self-hostable AI video-clip generator for turning long videos into vertical shorts with moment detection, tracking, captions, and dubbing.
description README.md
OpenShorts.app
Open source AI video platform with 3 tools in one: Clip Generator, AI Shorts (UGC videos with AI actors), and YouTube Studio.
Real OpenShorts output, not a mock-up. Source: Turn the Tables with Dan and Shoshana Jordan, Heritage of Faith, licensed CC BY.
Two people on camera? OpenShorts stacks them instead of shrinking the wide shot, puts the captions on the seam where they cover nobody, and switches back to a face-tracked crop when the cut goes to one person. The AI picks the layout per video; nothing to configure.
Two ways to run it, same software either way:
| Self-hosted (this repo) | Hosted on openshorts.app | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free forever, MIT | Free plan, paid from $12/mo |
| Speed | 5 to 8 min per 8-min video on CPU | About 50s on our NVIDIA GPU |
| API keys | Bring your own Gemini, ElevenLabs, fal.ai | Gemini included, nothing to set up |
| Watermark / limits | None, ever | Watermark and 20 min/mo on the free plan, neither on paid |
| Setup | Docker, 8GB+ RAM, model downloads | Sign in and paste a link |
| MCP / API for agents | Same /mcp endpoint, but only while your machine is on | Always-on endpoint at mcp.openshorts.app, API keys in one click |
| Your data | Your server | Ours |
Self-hosting is genuinely free and always will be. It costs you a machine, your own API keys and the time to keep it running. The hosted plans exist to cover that hardware and those keys, not to unlock features.
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b45fa983-16b4-48b5-ac5b-a267836b9ad9
Video Tutorial: How it works
Click the image above to watch the full walkthrough.
3 Tools in 1 Platform
1. Clip Generator
Turn your long-form videos — podcasts, webinars, livestreams, vlogs, interviews — into viral-ready 9:16 shorts for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.
2. AI Shorts (UGC Video Creator)
Generate marketing videos with AI actors for any product or business. No camera, no studio, no influencer budget. Just describe your product or paste a URL.
- Two cost modes: Low Cost (
$0.65/video) and Premium ($2/video) - Works for any business: SaaS, restaurants, e-commerce, coaching, local businesses
- AI-generated actors with lip-sync, voiceover, b-roll, and TikTok-style subtitles
- Choose from a shared avatar gallery or upload your own photo
- Publish directly to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube
3. YouTube Studio
Complete free AI YouTube toolkit: thumbnails, titles, descriptions, and direct publishing.
- AI thumbnail generator with face overlay
- 10 viral title suggestions with refinement chat
- Auto-generated descriptions with chapter timestamps
- One-click publish to YouTube
UGC Video Gallery
All generated videos and avatars are saved to a public gallery with SEO pages for each video.
- Public gallery page with hover-to-play (
/gallery) - Individual SEO video pages with og:video meta tags (
/video/{id}) - JSON-LD structured data for search engines
- Avatar gallery with prompt history
Key Features
Clip Generator
- Viral Moment Detection: Google Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite analyzes transcripts and scene boundaries to detect 3-15 high-potential moments
- Runs fully local if you want: point
LLM_BASE_URLat Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM or any OpenAI-compatible server and the moment picker runs on your own model, no Google key needed (see Run without a Google key) - Smart 9:16 Cropping: AI reframing per scene — TRACK mode (MediaPipe + YOLOv8 face tracking), GENERAL mode (blurred background), SPLIT mode (two speakers stacked, captions on the seam) and SCREENCAST mode (screen over presenter); the layout is picked per video by Gemini or forced from the dashboard
- Auto Subtitles: faster-whisper with word-level timestamps, styled and burned into clips
- AI Voice Dubbing: ElevenLabs integration for 30+ languages with voice cloning (bring your own ElevenLabs key, on the cloud too)
- Hook Text Overlays: AI-generated attention-grabbing text overlays
- AI Video Effects: Gemini-generated FFmpeg filters for professional effects
AI Shorts Pipeline
- Analyze: Scrape website URL + web research, or generate from manual description
- Script: AI writes viral scripts (hook - problem - solution - CTA format)
- Actor: Generate AI actors with Flux 2 Pro or select from shared gallery
- Voice: ElevenLabs TTS voiceover (English/Spanish, male/female)
- Video: Talking head generation (Hailuo 2.3 Fast img2video + VEED Lipsync)
- B-roll: AI-generated visuals with Ken Burns effect
- Composite: FFmpeg final assembly with subtitles and hook overlays
- Publish: Direct posting to TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts via Upload-Post
YouTube Studio
- AI-powered title generation with 10 viral options
- Interactive refinement chat for titles
- AI thumbnail generation with custom face + background
- Auto descriptions with chapter timestamps from Whisper transcript
- Direct YouTube publishing via Upload-Post
Social Auto-Publishing
- One-click posting to TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts simultaneously
- Schedule uploads for any date and time — plan your content calendar and let OpenShorts publish automatically
- Multi-platform distribution — publish to all your social networks at once from a single interface
- Upload-Post integration with async uploads
Infrastructure
- S3 cloud backup (private bucket for clips, public bucket for gallery/avatars)
- SEO gallery pages served by FastAPI with JSON-LD structured data
- Shared avatar gallery across all users
- Async job queue with configurable concurrency
Who Is This For?
- Content creators — Turn long videos into shorts automatically, publish to all platforms at once
- Marketing agencies — Generate UGC videos for clients at scale, no actors or studios needed
- SaaS founders — Create product demos and marketing shorts from just a URL
- E-commerce brands — Product videos with AI actors for TikTok Shop, Instagram, YouTube
- Local businesses — Restaurants, gyms, real estate, coaching — affordable video marketing
- Developers — Self-host, customize the pipeline, integrate via API
AI Shorts Showcase
Videos generated with OpenShorts AI Shorts — no camera, no studio, no actors:
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