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Promo Shorts guide

Promo Shorts

Studio

Describe your business and your idea, or start from your recordings. OwnClip writes the scenes, paints the pictures, adds a voice and music, and renders a motion-designed vertical video on your Mac.

  • About 2 minutes to set up, then a few minutes to render
  • Needs your business name and an idea, or a video or image in your Library.
  • Studio

In short

  • What it makes: a vertical 1080×1920 promo video from your recordings and pictures, with a voice, music and captions.
  • Plan: Studio, $99 one-time.
  • Fastest start: type your business name and one sentence about the idea, pick a style, and press Create my Short.

Describe your Short

The fastest way in: one idea becomes a whole Short of your own, which you can then change.
  1. Open Promo Shorts (More Tools → Promo Shorts). At the top of the templates, type your business name. Add your website, your logo and a photo of your product if you like. Without a logo, your name is drawn as an animated wordmark.
  2. Pick a style: Brand ad (kinetic type, logo reveal, light sweeps), Cinematic (big pictures, slow 3D camera, film look) or Social (fast cuts, punchy words). Or leave it on Auto and say the feel in your idea.
  3. Write the idea in a sentence or two: what it is, who it is for, the feel. Any language works; the words on screen follow yours.
  4. Press Create my Short. OwnClip writes the scenes, chooses how each one moves, picks the music and the voice, then paints the pictures one by one while you watch the preview.
  5. Change anything: the words in the Scene tab, how a scene moves and which word stands out (the Motion card), the style (the Look tab’s Direction card). Rewrite this scene gives you a fresh take on one scene. Save as my set keeps it under My sets.
  6. Press Generate. The pictures are painted again at full size, the voice and music are made, and the Short goes to your Library.

At most one scene waits for your own photo: the place, the product or the result that a painted picture must not stand in for. Everything is made on your Mac.

Make your first Short

Start from a recording already in your Library.
  1. 1

    Right-click a recording in the Library

    Choose “Make a Short…”. Promo Shorts opens with your recording already in the scenes.

  2. 2

    Check the picks

    OwnClip picks moments from your Video Analyst analysis if there is one, otherwise from where you clicked most, otherwise evenly. Play the preview, then click a scene in the strip to look closer.

  3. 3

    Read the words

    In the Scene tab, each scene has a headline and a spoken line, which is also the caption. Fix anything wrong. In the Details tab, add your product name and website.

  4. 4

    Look for “Ready” at the bottom right

    When every scene is complete, the footer says “Ready” with the estimated length. If it says “N to fix”, click it to jump to the first scene that needs attention.

  5. 5

    Press Generate

    A progress sheet opens, and you can keep working. When it finishes, it says “Your Short is in the Library”.

What you need

The Studio plan ($99, one-time). See Pricing. On other plans the sidebar entry and File menu item are hidden, and “Make a Short…” shows the upgrade prompt.

For brand-new music, a Mac with 32 GB of memory. The music model is one download of about 16 GB, and it needs 32 GB of memory to run. To check yours, open the Apple menu → About This Mac and read the Memory line. With less, or without the model, OwnClip uses its built-in music, which works on any Mac that runs OwnClip.

What a Promo Short is

A vertical 1080×1920 video built from scenes: an opening headline, your recordings or pictures, and an end card. A voice reads each scene’s line, and the same line appears as a caption. Your clips get Smart Zoom, and Smart Redact can blur sensitive details. The voice and music are made on your Mac (Kokoro for the voice, ACE-Step for the music).

Ways in

Seven places lead to the same screen. Those that start from a recording place it into the scenes for you.

Library, one video

What you click: Right-click → Make a Short…

Library, 2–6 items selected

What you click: Right-click → Make a Short from N. Each item gets a scene.

A video’s detail panel

What you click: Click Short.

Video editor

What you click: Click Short in the header. Your trims and cuts carry over.

Video Analyst

What you click: Open an analysis → Create → Promo Short. The analysis supplies the picks and a first draft of the text.

File menu

What you click: File → New Promo Short… starts empty, from a template.

Sidebar

What you click: More Tools → Promo Shorts.

Templates

The Templates rail on the left lists the starting points. If you pick more items than a template has places for, OwnClip switches to From my content so nothing is dropped.

From my content

What it is for: No template. An opening card, one scene per item, and a closing card.

What you supply: Your videos and pictures, plus a title

Why pay monthly

What it is for: Argues for a one-time price against subscriptions: a hook, a running total of the monthly cost, two recordings, a price comparison, an end card.

What you supply: Product name, the other app’s monthly and yearly price, your price, website, two recordings

Feature spotlight

What it is for: One hook, two features on your own footage, and a call to action.

What you supply: Product name, two feature names, website, a recording and a recording or picture

What’s new

What it is for: Announces a release: a title card and three highlights.

What you supply: Product name, version, three highlights, website, three pictures or recordings

Before → After

What it is for: The raw take first, then the finished one.

What you supply: Product name, website, two clips or pictures

Private by default

What it is for: A pitch that recordings stay on your Mac. Five scenes with editable wording.

What you supply: Product name, price, website, four pictures or recordings (at least one a video)

Scenes

The strip under the preview shows one numbered tile per scene. Click a tile to edit it in the Scene tab. A tile with a warning needs attention.

Hook

What it is: The opening headline, with an optional background picture or clip.

What you supply: Headline, second line, spoken line

The math

What it is: A receipt-style counter that adds up a running total.

What you supply: A monthly price (Details tab)

Recording

What it is: One of your videos, shown as a clip.

What you supply: The file, start point, framing

Image or recording

What it is: The same slot for either kind of file.

What you supply: The file

Price

What it is: An old price struck through, then the new one.

What you supply: Prices (Details tab)

End card

What it is: Your title, website and closing line, with your logo.

What you supply: Title, website (Details tab)

Each scene has a headline, a second line and the spoken line. Prices, the end card and fields such as product name and website are in the Details tab.

Choose and trim the media

Every media scene takes a video or an image.

Pick or drop a file

Use “Pick a video or image…” or drag a file from Finder onto the scene. Dropped files are added to your Library first.

Framing

Card shows a screen recording as a 16:9 card under the headline. Full screen fills the frame. Fit shows the whole picture over a blurred copy.

Start and end point

Choose where the clip starts, or set an end point. A shorter clip holds its last frame. A photo plays as a still with a slow zoom.

Keep the clip’s sound

Plays the clip’s audio under the narration. It is on by default for imported movies and off for screen recordings.

Generate a picture for a scene

No shot? Describe it. The Scene tab shows a Generate a picture panel when your Mac can run a picture generator.

Type what you want in “Describe the shot” and press Generate. It takes about a minute. Turn on “Build it around this picture” to keep your product or logo. The result is saved to your Library as “Generated · …”. Video generation is not offered.

Build from your own content

From my content is the template-free mode. It needs a title and at least one item. A scene with no spoken line is silent.

Add

The dashed Add tile at the end of the strip opens a picker for several picks. You can also drop files on the preview.

Earlier, Later and Delete scene

Earlier and Later move the selected scene one place along the strip. Delete scene removes it.

Write the text from my content

In the Details tab. A vision model looks at each picture, or a frame of each clip, and writes a headline and spoken line. Lines you typed are kept.

Try it: move a scene

Select a scene, then use Earlier or Later. Its text, trim and sound move with it.

Voice and music

Both live in the Voice tab.

Voice

The picker is grouped: Narrators, Premium voices, Your voice (any cloned voice you made) and Mac voices. Mac voices are the way to other languages. Write the scene lines in the voice’s language.

Music: Compose new or Built-in

Compose new writes an original track to the length of the video. It needs the music model installed and a Mac with 32 GB of memory (see What you need). Built-in uses a track that fits the template, and also covers a failed compose.

Brand colours and captions

The Look tab. To set up a Brand Kit, see the Brand Studio guide.

Use my Brand Kit

Puts your colours, logo and font on the end card. With no kit, “Open Brand” takes you to Brand Studio.

This Short’s look

Pick an accent colour, background and logo for this Short only. “Save colours to Brand Kit” writes them back to your kit.

Captions

Word pop shows a few words at a time. Full line shows the whole line. Off hides them.

Smart Zoom and Smart Redact

Both apply when you press Generate, so the preview shows the raw clip. Smart Zoom follows the clicks in your recording. Smart Redact is on by default (“Blur emails, phone numbers and keys”) and keeps any blur you added yourself.

Generate

Press Generate when the footer says “Ready”. You can cancel at any time and nothing is saved.

When it finishes, the sheet offers Open in Editor, Library, Smart Share and Done, and the file is saved as “Promo – template name”. If it cannot save, the sheet gives the reason, with Discard and “Try saving again”.

Refine it and export

The finished Short is a normal video in your Library. Choose Open in Editor to trim it or add text (see the Editor guide), then share it with Smart Share or export it. Each run saves a new file, so you can try different wording without losing the last one.

Privacy

Nothing is uploaded. The voice, music, pictures, text writing, Smart Redact scan and the render all happen on your Mac. Working files sit in a private temporary folder and are deleted when the run ends.

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting

I don’t see Promo Shorts in the sidebar or the File menu.
It is not in the current download yet. Once it ships, it also needs the Studio plan: on other plans the sidebar entry and File → New Promo Short… are hidden, and “Make a Short…” shows the upgrade prompt.
Generate is greyed out and the footer says “N to fix”.
Click “N to fix”. It selects the first scene with a problem and lists each one under that scene’s fields. Usual causes: an empty spoken line, a line too long for its scene, a caption that needs more than two lines, a scene with no video or image, or a missing monthly price. Shorten the line or pick the media.
The run stops with “Media changed or missing: <name>”.
Before starting, OwnClip checks that every file is where it was, with the same size and modification time. If you moved, renamed or edited a file, pick it again in its scene and press Generate.
The music is a built-in track, not a new one.
Compose new needs the music model installed and a Mac with 32 GB of memory. If composing fails mid-run, the Short still finishes with the built-in track and a note on the done sheet.
There is no “Generate a picture” panel in a scene.
The panel appears only when your Mac can run a picture generator. Results are saved to your Library as “Generated · …”.
I can’t hear my clip’s sound, the voice or the music in the preview.
The preview is always silent. Clip sound, narration and music are mixed when you generate, so listen to the finished Short. Also check “Keep the clip’s sound” on the scene.