Castream AI Shorts: Turn Streams and Phone Videos into Vertical Shorts

You already did the hard part. You went live, or you filmed the thing, and somewhere inside that long video is a moment worth posting again. Castream AI Shorts is built to find that moment for you — and turn it into a vertical short you can actually post.

Here's the short version: you give Castream a video, it listens to the whole thing, picks the strongest moments, and hands you up to 3 captioned shorts, up to 60 seconds each, in 9:16 vertical format. Each one comes with a title, a description, and hashtags, plus an on-screen hook line. You keep the ones you like, download them, or share them from your phone.

You don't need to be a live streamer to use it. That matters, because a lot of clip tools assume you are. With AI Shorts, a video from your camera roll counts just as much as a stream.

What you get from one video

Every short AI Shorts makes for you is:

• Vertical 9:16 video, framed for phones, up to 60 seconds long
• Word-by-word captions burned in, in the style you picked, with the spoken word highlighted as it's said
• A hook on screen, a short line at the top that tells viewers why to keep watching
• A title, a description, and hashtags you can paste when you post
• Ready to download or share to TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook Reels

You get up to 3 shorts from a single video. If a video has fewer strong moments, you may get fewer — and that's by design. Three weak clips don't beat one good one.

Shorts are kept for 30 days. Keep the ones you like, delete the rest, and download the ones you want to keep for good. Stream recordings are also kept for 30 days.

How it works in three steps

1. Pick a video

Choose a past stream, a video from your phone, or a link. Long videos are fine — AI Shorts is meant for the long stuff you'd never sit down and clip by hand.

2. Castream finds the moments

It listens to the whole video, and if it was a stream, it reads your chat too. That second signal is what sets it apart: it can see when viewers laughed, reacted, or asked for more, lined up against what you were saying at that exact moment. You can read more about that in How Castream AI Shorts Finds Your Best Moments.

3. Keep, edit, and post

Each short arrives with captions, a title, and hashtags. Keep the ones you like, fix captions on the web if a word is off, then download or share them. Caption edits never use credits.

Every way to bring a video in

AI Shorts isn't picky about where your video came from:

Past streams. Every Castream stream is recorded. Make shorts from it in a tap, and the moments your chat reacted to count too. See How to Turn a Past Stream into Shorts with Castream AI Shorts.

Phone videos. Upload from your camera roll, long videos included. If an upload stops, it picks up where it left off when you reopen the app. See How to Turn a Phone Video into a Short with Castream.

Links. Paste a Dropbox or Google Drive share link, or a direct link to an MP4 file. The file has to be shared so that anyone with the link can open it.

Uploads on the web. On a computer? Drop a video into Shorts on castream.io and get the same shorts. See How to Turn a Link or Web Upload into AI Shorts.

A fitness coach, for example, might turn a full class recording into three short form cues. A podcaster might pull the one answer that got the chat going. A church streamer might clip the moment the congregation reacted most. The input is different; the job is the same — find the part worth reposting.

Captions that do the scrolling work for you

Most people watch shorts with the sound off at first. That's why captions aren't an afterthought here.

You pick a caption style before your shorts are cut: Classic, Bold, Boxed, or Clean. Every word is timed to your voice, and the word being spoken lights up as you hear it. If the AI gets a word wrong, the web caption editor lets you fix it, change the text and highlight colors, and move the captions up or down — without spending credits.

There's a full breakdown in AI Shorts Captions: Styles and Word-by-Word Highlighting, and a step-by-step for the editor in How to Edit AI Shorts Captions on the Web.

What it costs, in plain terms

AI Shorts runs on credits, and the math is deliberately simple: 1 credit = 1 minute of video. A 45-minute video uses 45 credits, however many shorts come out of it.

• Free trial: 15 credits
• Creator ($9.99/month): 50 credits a month
• Pro ($16.99/month): 200 credits a month

Need more? You can buy packs on the web: 100 credits for $4.99, 300 for $11.99, or 1,000 for $29.99. If a job fails or you cancel it, every credit goes back to your balance. Monthly plan credits reset on your renewal date and don't roll over; pack credits don't expire while you're on Creator or Pro. Prices are in USD, and tax may be added at checkout.

The full breakdown, with worked examples, is in Castream AI Shorts Credits and Pricing Explained.

You can try it with a 3-day free Pro trial when you sign up on the web. A card is required, and you're billed after 3 days unless you cancel.

Languages it handles

Transcription and captions work best in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Hindi, and Japanese — including videos that switch between them. If your stream bounces between two languages mid-sentence, that's covered, not a special case.

Where you can use it right now

AI Shorts is part of Castream 7.0. It's live on iPhone and on the web, and the Android update is rolling out now.

Who this is actually for

It helps to picture a few real starting points, because "turn a video into shorts" sounds generic until you attach it to a video you already have.

A gamer finishes a stream where chat went wild at one play. That play, with the chat reaction behind it, is a short — and it's a short the streamer didn't have to hunt for in a two-hour recording.

A fitness coach records a full class, then pulls three short cues from it: one warm-up tip, one form correction, one cool-down stretch. Each one works on its own, and none of them requires re-filming anything.

A podcaster records a long conversation and gets back the one answer that would have made a listener stop scrolling. The rest of the episode still exists in full; the short is just the doorway into it.

A church streamer clips the moment the congregation responded most, and posts it during the week — a way for the service to keep reaching people after Sunday.

A teacher turns a lesson recording into a short explainer that students can rewatch without sitting through the whole class again.

None of these people needed new footage. They needed a second use for footage they already had, and that's the job AI Shorts does.

Before your first short: a short checklist

You don't need much preparation, but a minute of setup saves a round of rework:

• Pick your video. A past stream, a phone video, a link, or a web upload — start with the one you're most curious about, not the one you think is "best."
• Pick your caption style. Classic, Bold, Boxed, or Clean — chosen before cutting, so decide before you start the job, not after.
• Check your credits. Remember the math: 1 credit per minute of video. A 30-minute video is 30 credits, whether it yields one short or three.
• If you're pasting a link, check its sharing setting. Dropbox and Google Drive links need to be shared so anyone with the link can open them.
• Plan to download your keepers. Shorts are kept for 30 days. If a short is worth posting next month, download it now rather than trusting yourself to remember it later.

What AI Shorts is not

It's worth being clear about this, because clip tools get oversold. AI Shorts doesn't turn a bad video into a good one, and it doesn't invent moments that weren't in your footage. It finds the strongest moments that are already there, cuts them into vertical shorts, captions them, and hands you a title, description, and hashtags to post with. The judgement call at the end — keep it or delete it — is still yours, and it should be.

A practical way to start

Don't overthink your first video. Pick a recent stream or a phone video you already liked, let AI Shorts cut it, and look at what it picked before you judge the tool. The moments it finds — especially the chat-driven ones — are often not the moments you'd have picked yourself, and that's usually the point.

Once you've got your first three shorts, the posting part is straightforward: each one comes with a title, description, and hashtags to paste, and you can download it or share it from your phone. The details are in AI Shorts Titles, Hooks and Hashtags: How to Post Your Shorts.

Learn more about the feature itself on Castream AI Shorts. Your next short is probably already on your phone.