Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and CapCut were built for filmmakers and content creators. Your volunteer team shouldn't need a 40-hour course to put a clip on Instagram. Sermon Clips is purpose-built church video editing software — upload the sermon recording, get 5 polished vertical clips back in minutes, every week.
Church communications teams are small. Sermon recordings are long. The tools built for professional video production weren't designed for this workflow.
A 45-minute sermon recording has maybe 10 minutes of genuinely shareable moments. Scrubbing through manually to find them — then deciding where exactly to cut in and out — is 2–3 hours of work before you've touched an edit.
The camera records in landscape. Every major social platform serves short-form vertical. Manually reframing up to 5 clips per week in Premiere means tracking the speaker through every cut, for every clip — or shipping black bars and hoping nobody notices.
Burning captions into a clip in Premiere or DaVinci Resolve means importing an SRT file, placing a subtitle track, styling it, and checking every line. For up to 5 clips per week, that's 2–3 hours of additional work — and it still requires someone who knows the software.
Five automated steps replace what used to be a full afternoon of volunteer work. Here's the complete workflow.
Upload the sermon recording
Drop in a video file or paste a YouTube link. Any standard video format works — the raw file from your camera, your streaming platform's export, or a Zoom recording. You don't need to trim or prep it first.
AI reads the full sermon transcript
Sermon Clips transcribes the entire message with word-level timing, then reads that transcript the way an experienced comms director would — identifying the introduction, the key illustrations, the scripture anchors, the emotional climax, and the altar call. Clip selection is based on meaning and sermon structure, not just audio energy or visual excitement.
The best moments are selected and trimmed — typically ~5
The AI identifies the moments that work as standalone clips — complete thoughts with a clear beginning, emotional arc, and conclusion. Each clip is cut at natural speech boundaries, not mid-sentence, with dead air trimmed. You get clips that feel intentional, not just segments sliced from a longer recording.
Automatic vertical reframing to 9:16
Face-detection tracks your pastor throughout each clip and keeps them centered in the 9:16 frame — even if the original camera was offset, wide-angle, or tracking. The result is a vertical clip that looks like it was filmed for Instagram, not cropped out of a church livestream.
Captions burned in, clips ready to post
Word-timed captions are generated from the transcript in the language the sermon was preached in, and burned directly into the video pixels. No SRT export. No subtitle track. No separate captioning workflow. Download the clips from your dashboard or the delivery email, then post them to Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube Shorts.
The difference between Sermon Clips and a general video editing tool isn't just the interface. It's that the AI was trained on sermon content and understands what makes a sermon clip work.
Understands sermon structure
A general-purpose AI clips the loudest or most energetic moments. Sermon Clips understands that the most powerful moment in a sermon might be a quiet, conviction-filled pause — or a slow build that pays off at minute 42. It selects clips based on theological narrative, not just engagement signals.
Word-timed captions on every clip
Captions are generated with word-level timing and burned into the video, in the language the sermon was preached in (auto-detected). Your congregation reads those words on screen — so they're synced to the speech, not pasted on as a block.
Dead air trimmed automatically
Long pauses and silences get trimmed out of each clip, so the pacing holds up on a social feed without anyone touching a timeline.
A vision check on every clip
Transcript analysis alone can't see a title slide or a shot of the worship band. Sermon Clips also checks actual video frames before cutting, so clips open on your pastor speaking — not on a graphic, an announcement slide, or the back of the room.
Safe-zone caption positioning
Captions are placed in the upper-middle third of the 9:16 frame — above the Instagram and TikTok UI overlays, and below the top edge where the platform crops. The most common DIY mistake is captions buried behind the like-button column or the handle text.
Works for volunteer teams
Your media volunteer shouldn't need Premiere Pro training to post a Sunday clip by Tuesday. The defaults are calibrated for sermon content, so the first clip out of the box looks good — not like a rough cut that needs manual adjustment.
AI clip selection from full sermon
No scrubbing. The AI reads the transcript, understands sermon structure, and selects the moments that work as standalone clips — complete thoughts with a theological arc. Typically ~5 per sermon.
Auto-trim with natural cut points
Clips are trimmed at sentence and clause boundaries — never mid-word, never mid-thought. Each clip starts and ends cleanly, like a human editor reviewed every cut.
Vertical reframing (9:16)
Face-detection tracks the speaker and keeps them centered in the vertical frame throughout the clip, even through movement, camera cuts, and offset wide shots.
Burned-in theology-aware captions
Captions generated from a theology-tuned transcript, burned into the video pixels — not attached as a subtitle file. They survive every reshare and platform conversion.
Thumbnail for every clip
Each clip comes with an auto-generated thumbnail, so you can preview at a glance and pick a cover frame without opening a video editor.
Dashboard + email delivery
Clips land in your dashboard and your inbox with durable download links. Download the MP4s and post or schedule them through your existing social media tools. (Direct publishing isn't built yet — posting is a download-and-upload step.)
Upload a sermon recording and get 5 polished, vertical, captioned clips back in minutes — ready to post to Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. First two sermons are free.
Does our church need a video editor to use Sermon Clips?
No. Sermon Clips is specifically designed for churches without a dedicated video editor on staff. You upload the sermon recording and the AI handles clip selection, trimming, vertical reframing, captioning, and export. Most church teams are producing clips within 15 minutes of their first upload — with zero prior video editing experience required. If you do have a video editor on staff, they'll find Sermon Clips saves them 3–4 hours per week on the social clip workflow so they can focus on higher-value production work.
How is Sermon Clips different from Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve for church video editing?
Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve are professional video editing suites designed for filmmakers — they can do almost anything, but they require significant training, a capable computer, and hours of hands-on editing for each piece of content. Sermon Clips is a purpose-built church video editing tool focused on one specific workflow: taking a Sunday sermon recording and turning it into roughly five polished social clips. There's no timeline to learn, no manual trimming, no separate caption workflow. The AI does the editing decisions — you download the finished clips and post them. For churches whose goal is consistent weekly social content from their sermon, Sermon Clips will outperform a professional editing suite operated by a volunteer.
Can Sermon Clips apply our church's branding to clips?
No — Sermon Clips doesn't apply logos, intros/outros, or custom brand colors to clips. Every clip ships with the same clean treatment: vertical 9:16 framing with the speaker tracked and centered, and word-timed captions burned in. If you want a logo or branded end card on top, add it in a free tool like CapCut or Canva after downloading — the clips are a clean starting file for that. The vertical reframing handles speaker positioning automatically, so your pastor is centered in the 9:16 frame regardless of where the camera was positioned during recording.