Users can select clips from their existing video library, and OpusClip’s AI will automatically generate a cohesive video draft, saving time on manual editing and making it easy to repurpose past content into fresh videos.
Product Type
New feature, AI, 2C
Duration
Dec 2024 - Mar 2024
(4 month)
Team
JJ Li (Head of Product)
Jingyu (Designer)
Responsibility
Research, Prototyping,
User Testing
With over 6 million active users, Opus Clip is known for turning long videos into short clips. Now, it's expanding its capabilities to help creators streamline more of their workflow, improve productivity, and create more value from their existing content.
Opus Clip’s core users—YouTubers, podcasters, and digital marketers—often repurpose existing footage into new formats like highlight reels, compilations, or year-end recaps. While the platform is known for AI-powered clip generation, research revealed that this type of content reuse is common yet labor-intensive. This uncovered a clear opportunity for Opus Clip to expand its capabilities and support faster, smarter content repurposing.
Jake - YouTuber
Jake runs a finance channel covering stock analysis. He often reuses past footage for updates, comparisons, or recaps, and needs a fast way to turn archived videos into fresh content.
Maya – Digital Marketer
Maya creates social content for a startup, repurposing webinars and long videos into short, punchy promos. She looks for tools that save time and keep content on-brand.
Ryan – Podcaster
Ryan runs a podcast with over 100 episodes. He frequently assembles themed compilations or highlight reels and needs an efficient way to pull clips from his video library.
Users are now able to select clips from their library, have AI generate a structured narrative, and receive a draft video ready for refinement. This workflow accelerates the editing process while still giving creators control over the final outcome.
Research
Opus Clip had developed a script-to-video feature that allowed users to generate videos based on written prompts, following the rising trend of prompt-driven content creation. However, despite high initial engagement, the feature saw low user retention.
To understand why users didn’t find the feature valuable and to uncover new opportunity areas, we conducted in-depth interviews with 8 Opus Clip users.
Many Opus Clip users are professional video creators with established visual styles and quality standards. They found that AI-generated videos often fell short—either lacking the polish they needed or failing to align with the tone and style of their previous content.
Users often have extensive video libraries and regularly need to repurpose past footage. However, the current process requires them to manually search, select, and edit clips—making it time-consuming.
User Flow
Design Decision - Workflow
Two workflows
We explored two workflows that varies in video selection and amount of manual control
Workflow 1
❌ Require too much manual effort and time consuming
5/8 users
think manual adjust clips is time-consuming, and wanted more automation in storyline regeneration.
❌ Confusing workflow and interface
7/8 users
felt confused about the workflow and the elements on this screen and required explanations
Workflow 2
✅ Video cart in search eases quick add and adjust videos
6/8 users
user like splitting the cart and storyboard to separate rough-cut and refinement stages, so they can focus on each step.
✅ AI automation is the key
6/8 users
users prefer a prompt box to guide AI regenerate storylines, bringing more clarity to guided automation.
Design Decision - Iteration & Refinement
Iterations - Clip Panel
Removed the thumbnail to save space since there is already preview on the right
Organized everything in the box to make it look cleaner
Added a leading icon to indicate if this is an voiceover or original soundtrack
Changed the leading icon to a trailing label to save space, and more importantly, explain what the icon mean because we realized the previous one led to a lot of confusion
Iterations - Voice Edit Interactions
To better align with users' intent, we changed the interaction to edit the whole blocks, not partial text
Full blocks also give AI better context, leading to more coherent output
It reduces accidental triggers of editing action
It also enables easier maintenance and future features.
