FAQ

It takes a long video file — a podcast, a Twitch VOD, a lecture — and produces short vertical clips suitable for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts. It runs as a Windows desktop application. The source video stays on your computer.

Two reasons. First, long source video. Web services cap source at 60 to 90 minutes because they are paying to store and process your upload; a desktop app does not have that constraint. Second, privacy. Your raw footage stays on your machine.

English is the primary tested language. Whisper supports about 100 languages, and the underlying transcription will work, but the moment-scoring heuristics and the karaoke caption rendering are tuned for English. Other languages are best-effort at launch.

Not yet. Windows only at launch. Mac is planned, no committed date.

Windows 10 or 11 64-bit, 8 GB RAM (16 GB recommended for source over an hour), and about 4 GB of free disk for the Whisper model and cache.

Only for first-time model download, license activation, optional update checks, optional anonymous analytics, and optional LLM scoring. Transcription and rendering are fully offline once the model is cached.

60 minutes covers one weekly hour-long podcast. If you produce more than that, Pro at $19/mo removes the cap and unlocks brand kits, filler-word removal, and silence trimming. BYO-key LLM scoring is available on every tier. The Starter cap is on source duration, not output clip count.

Source video duration of every video you load and process. If you load a 92-minute file you use 92 minutes from the meter, regardless of how many clips you export. If you cancel partway through, the time is still counted because the transcription pass ran. The meter resets on the 1st of each month UTC.

The app blocks new exports until the meter resets or you upgrade. Existing files remain on disk. You will get a warning at 80 percent.

No. There is a free trial for 60 source-minutes and up to 15 clips. After that, Starter is the entry tier at $9/month.

The desktop license itself is the product. The LLM is a tool that the desktop license can use. You pay your selected provider directly for tokens; the Vendor does not mark up tokens.

All current Pro features. Updates within the current major version stream (0.x). Future major versions (1.x and beyond) may be a separate purchase. There are no recurring charges.

Yes. Upgrades take effect immediately. Downgrades take effect at the end of the current billing period.

The percentage of clips an automated tool produces that are actually usable. The honest industry baseline is below 30 percent on tough sources. ClipForge ships a benchmark script so you can measure yield on a Creative Commons TED talk before paying. Your numbers will depend heavily on your source content.

Try these in order: (1) add proper nouns and recurring jargon to the Custom Vocabulary field in Settings, (2) enable LLM scoring with your own API key, (3) if your audio quality is poor, the transcript will be poor — clean source audio is the largest single factor.

The free trial adds a small ClipForge Trial watermark. Every paid tier exports without watermarks.

No. The source video file never leaves your computer. Optional LLM scoring sends only transcript excerpts to the provider you choose, using your own API key.

Optional anonymous analytics are off by default and never include your media, transcript, filenames, API keys, or contact information. There is no crash reporting service. The product website has no cookies or tracking.

Your payment information goes to Gumroad and is governed by their privacy policy. The Vendor receives only your purchase email, product, and transaction ID.

See the License Recovery page. Short version: email the address you bought with from that same address.

Yes, on machines you personally control. Do not share keys with other people.

14 days, no questions. Email jgarci.lugo+clipforge@gmail.com from the purchase address. See Refund Policy.

Email jgarci.lugo+clipforge@gmail.com with the version number (Help → About) and a description of what happened. Logs at %LOCALAPPDATA%\ClipForge\logs\ are helpful.

There is a small private group for early users. Email for an invite link.

A short public roadmap will be posted on the product website at launch. The top items as of v0.3.0 are: Mac build, multi-speaker labeling, batch processing of folders.