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HeyGen Adds AI Clipping to Its API, Turning Long Videos Into Social-Ready Highlights in One Call

July 18, 2026 at 15:08 EDT

Media Generation
AI Agents

HeyGen has added a new AI Clipping capability to its developer API that converts a long-form video into scored, social-media-ready short clips with a single API call, extending the platform's automation from generation and translation into repurposing. The feature, documented on the company's developer portal, is aimed at teams that produce interviews, podcasts, and long recordings and want to extract shareable moments programmatically rather than by hand.

Developer API · HeyGen

AI Clipping Turns Long Videos Into Ranked Social Shorts — In One API Call

A new POST /v3/clips endpoint points at an hour of footage and returns scored, caption-ready clips automatically — extending HeyGen's pipeline from generation and translation into repurposing.

1–10

clips per request (default 5)

0–1

confidence score per clip

9:16

default vertical ratio (+ 1:1, 16:9)

selection modes to steer output

Three ways to select clips

Auto

No input — the model detects highlights on its own.

Instruction

A natural-language prompt steers clips toward a topic.

Windows

Exact timestamps bypass the model and cut precise segments.

The workflow

Long video
URL or asset_id

→

Model scores
async job

→

Ranked clips
via callback

Each returned clip carries a label, a score, start/end timestamps, optional burned-in WebVTT captions, and a pre-signed download URL.

What the category does well

Slashes time to turn long content into short posts
Auto-adds captions and music in one pipeline
Integrates with HeyGen's avatars & translation

Open questions

Automated selection can be uneven
Often needs manual fine-tuning
No dedicated price published; broad API is pay-as-you-go

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