Once we’ve got our first video shoot and edited we have an asset that we can immediately publish. We’ll cover the publishing and marketing process in the next Part.

Before we do so though I want to cover multipurposing - how we can convert a video into different formats for different platforms and uses.

There are two primary parameters here: length of video and aspect ratio.

Length is how many minutes the video is. Certain length videos work better on different platforms - for example short videos work on TikTok and longer videos on Youtube.

Aspect ratio is the “shape” of the video. Videos on Youtube tend to be horizontal, ie. wider than they are high whilst videos on TikTok and other mobile first platforms are vertical, higher than they are wide.

What you focus on depends entirely on your target platforms. I’ll show you a framework for multipurposing that applies to any content.

The basic flow is:

1. Decide platforms
2.
Change aspect ratio
3.
Change length

Let’s get started!

1. Platform choices

First up we need to decide what platforms we want to create video for.

This depends on where our audience hangs out!

Let’s use a basic prompt to point us in the right direction:

Act as a market researcher

My business niche is [topic]

Give me a list of all the potential social media platforms that utilise video, in order of importance for my niche

Put in your particular niche so that ChatGPT can better make suggestions about the best platforms.

I’ve used “AI to start businesses” as the example niche here.

Prompt Output

ChatGPT will output the main platforms in order of significance.

This order for “AI to start businesses” as the niche is pretty spot on:

• Youtube for longer form guides

• LinkedIn to focus on businesses

• TikTok and Instagram because they are so video focused

I’d personally put X further up for me but that’s because i) I have a following there and ii) in more recent times X has begun to prioritise video. ChatGPT doesn’t have knowledge of these two facts. Use your judgement as always.

2. Aspect Ratio

First we optimise for aspect ratio. This is the “shape” of the video.

Generally all platforms can take multiple aspect ratios - but they will display strangely.

For instance you can upload a widescreen horizontal video to Tiktok but it’s going to be presented very small with wide black bars above and below it. It’s not ideal.

Therefore we want to make sure to use the right aspect ratio for the platform.

Once you’ve decided the platforms you are targeting here’s the process.

I will assume that you shot your videos in horizontal video. If using a webcam this will have been the default. It’s also easier to go from horizontal to vertical which is why I used horizontal in previous Parts.

Open up your project and make sure nothing (no video, audio, subtitles) are selected.

In the right hand options menu you’ll see an option that says “Resize Canvas”. Go ahead and click this:

You’ll now be given a screen that has the different sizing options. Helpful it has all the major social media platforms built in!

Choose the platform you want to create a video for. I’ll choose TikTok.

This will give me more options:

The default option is “Fit to centre” which makes a TikTok shaped video by adding bars around the top and bottom. This works in a pinch - it’s fast and allows you to quickly publish. If happy with this click Open as a New Project.

This will create a new project in TikTok format from which you can export.

Alternatively click Fill and Crop:

This “punches in” to the video, focusing on the centre element. In this case my face. Importantly you also have the ability to make edits to this format. We’ll do that next. Go ahead and click Open as New Project.

Kapwing will automatically adjust subtitles that you’ve added - making them fit the new aspect ratio.

The main task for you will be to resize images. They get shrunk when changing to a smaller format like TikTok’s 9:16. Therefore find all your images in the timeline and adjust them so they are large enough to be visible.

Apart from that if your video is primarily you delivering to camera there shouldn’t be too much more work needed to reformat.

Repeat this for any other formats you need. You’ll normally just need one horizontal (your first video) and one vertical and you’ll have most bases covered. Instagram Stories/Reels take the same 9:16 format as TikTok thankfully.

3. Content Length

Once you’ve created your various aspect ratios we want to create shorter clips.

You’ll mainly be doing this for your vertical videos. Vertical video formats are used for TikTok, IG Reels and Youtube Shorts. All are short length, vertical format. Therefore we’ll be cutting shorter clips out of our vertical video project.

The basic idea here is to cut down longer videos into sub 1 minute clips. These clips should themselves be valuable, even without the rest of the video.

This can be done manually by going through the video and adding edits at sensible points. But we’re Prompt Entrepreneurs and are going to be smart about this.

Go to Subtitles and find the Download button above your generated subtitles.

Download your subtitles in .SRT.

Once downloaded change the file name from subtitles.srt to subtitles.txt.

This changes the file so that i) we can easily open it and ii) we can upload it to ChatGPT. Smart eh.

If you open the file you’ll see this:

Those number are timecodes. They tell us when certain words are being said. This will be useful shortly.

If your video is long (say, 10 minutes or more) head over to ChatGPT and use this prompt:

Act as a social media video editor. 

Use the attached script with timecodes to suggest clips that can be taken from this longer video

Suggest 3x ~60 second clips  and 3 x ~30 second clips. They can be shorter.

Clips should be concise, actionable and complete in and of themselves

Provide the scripts of the clips along with in and out points

If it is short, around 2 minutes or so use this prompt:

Act as a social media video editor. 

Use the attached script with timecodes to suggest a clip that can be taken from this longer video

The clip should be concise, actionable and complete in and of itself

Extract the best ~30 second clip from this video. It can be shorter

Prompt Output

ChatGPT will read the script and extract the best parts of the video for you to clip out. It’ll even include the timecode so you can edit exactly at those points.

Pulling it together

A reminder of what we’re covering this week :

Part 1: Creating Video Scripts

Part 2: Recording High-Quality Video

Part 3: Rapid video editing

Part 4: Multi-Purposing Content

Part 5: Publishing and Promoting Video