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Alexey Yarmots
Alexey Yarmots

Posted on AI-assisted

I built Bitcut: turn a long video into Shorts with captions on your iPhone

I'm Alexey, a solo developer, and I built Bitcut. It's an iPhone app that turns a long video (a podcast, interview, lecture or vlog) into vertical Shorts, Reels and TikToks.

Cutting clips from a long recording by hand means three jobs: finding moments that work on their own, adding captions and reframing to 9:16. Bitcut does all three on the phone.

What it does

  • Generate Shorts. It listens to what is said and picks moments that make sense on their own, ranked by quality. Trailer mode builds one reel from the strongest highlights; Parts splits a recording into equal clips.
  • Word-by-word captions. 18 caption looks with karaoke highlighting; you can fix text and timing right on the timeline.
  • Face tracking. A 16:9 video becomes 9:16 and the frame follows the speaker across scene changes.
  • Cuts on the beat. Cuts snap to the music, and speech is never cut mid-word.
  • A full multi-track editor: trim, split, voiceover, title cards, transitions, voice enhancement. Import from Photos, Files or a YouTube link.

Editing and rendering happen on the phone. For captions only the audio track is sent for transcription. You don't need an account to start.

What is free

The free plan has the full editor and 30 AI minutes a month; exports carry a watermark. Paid plans are listed on the App Store page. There are also free browser tools on bitcut.app/tools: a YouTube transcript and YouTube to Shorts.

What I would like feedback on

  • Clips where the chosen moment doesn't stand on its own: what was the video about?
  • Edits where the cuts feel wrong for the music: which genre and caption style you used.

Bitcut is on the App Store for iPhone and iPad (iOS 18+). I'll answer questions in the comments.

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