Auto-Turn Every New YouTube Video into Instagram Reels Clips with AI
An n8n workflow that watches your YouTube channel, sends each new upload to an AI clipping service, and drops three vertical, caption-ready Reels clips into Google Drive — so one long video becomes a week of Instagram content without any manual editing.
- 1
Watch your channel for new uploads
Add an
RSS Feed Triggerpointed athttps://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=YOUR_CHANNEL_ID. Every channel exposes this free feed — no YouTube API key or quota needed — and it fires within minutes of publishing. - 2
Pull the transcript
An
HTTP Requestnode runs an Apify YouTube-transcript actor with the video URL and returns the full spoken text with timestamps. This is the raw material Claude reads to find the best moments. - 3
Ask Claude for the three best clips
An
HTTP Requestto Claude sends the transcript with a prompt: return exactly three clip objects, each withstart,end(max 45 seconds), a punchycaptionunder 125 characters, and 3 niche hashtags. Ask for strict JSON so the next node can parse it without cleanup. - 4
Cut the vertical clips
Split Claude's JSON with an
Item Listsnode, then anHTTP Requestcalls your clipping API (or an FFmpeg node) with each start/end pair. Request a 1080x1920 vertical crop so the output drops straight into Reels without reformatting. - 5
Save to Drive for a one-tap post
A
Google Drivenode uploads each clip into a dated folder and aGoogle Sheetsnode logs the caption + hashtags next to the file link. Your posting routine becomes: open the folder, watch the 45-second clip, copy the caption, hit share.
Frequently asked questions
How does the workflow pick which moments to clip?
It sends the transcript to Claude and asks for the three highest-retention moments — a strong hook, a surprising fact, and a clear payoff. Claude returns start/end timestamps, and the clipping API cuts exactly those segments. You can tune the prompt to prefer educational tips, funny beats, or product mentions depending on your niche.
Can it post to Instagram automatically instead of Google Drive?
Yes, but we deliberately stop at Drive. Instagram's Graph API allows publishing Reels for Business/Creator accounts, so you can add an HTTP Request node to the Content Publishing endpoint after the clip step. We keep it manual by default because auto-posting unreviewed clips is the fastest way to ship an awkward cut — review, then post.
Do I need a paid video-clipping API?
You need something that can cut a video by timestamp. Options range from a hosted API like Cloudinary or a dedicated clipping actor on Apify, to a self-hosted FFmpeg step if you run n8n on your own server. The workflow notes show the FFmpeg command so you can avoid per-clip fees entirely.
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