In one sentence: A video snippet turns a short moment from your episode - a strong quote, a funny exchange, a key insight - into a ready-to-post vertical video for Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts and LinkedIn, made right in the episode editor in a couple of minutes.
What it does
Your best moments are buried inside long episodes. People scrolling social media won't press play on a 45-minute file, but they will stop for 30 seconds of something that grabs them. A snippet gets that moment in front of them.
You pick a fragment of the episode, type the quote people should remember, and choose a style. Springcast turns it into a vertical video (1080 × 1920, the 9:16 format every social platform uses) with:
- A header with your cover art, the show name and the episode title.
- A quote card that opens the video. It shows your quote, with the words you choose highlighted in an accent color, and who said it. The audio already plays while the quote is on screen.
- A waveform that lights up bar by bar as the audio plays, so viewers can see it's audio.
- Captions from your transcript, if you want them, one sentence at a time.
- A background of your choice: colors from your cover, your own colors, an image, or a video.
- The Springcast logo in the corner, which you can hide on most plans.
You download the finished video as an MP4 and post it wherever you like. Nothing is published automatically.
Who has access
Video snippets are included on every plan. What you can do with them depends on the show's plan:
| Essential | Professional, Scale, Company | |
|---|---|---|
| Create and download snippets | Yes | Yes |
| Cover colors, your own colors, image background | Yes | Yes |
| Video background (upload a video) | - | Yes |
| Cut the snippet from the episode video | - | Yes |
| Hide the Springcast logo | - | Yes |
On Essential, the Springcast logo is always shown. To use video backgrounds or hide the logo, upgrade the show's plan.
How to use it
- Open the episode you want to make a snippet of, go to its Editor tab and click Open editor.
- In the tool bar on the right, click Snippets.
- Choose your fragment. Drag across the waveform to select the moment you want to share. No selection? Then the snippet starts at the playhead and lasts 30 seconds.
- Click Create snippet from selection (or Create snippet at playhead). You can also press M. The snippet composer opens.
- Fill in the content on the left: fine-tune the start and end, type your quote, and add a name and role.
- Check the preview in the middle. Press play to see and hear the snippet the way it will be rendered.
- Choose a style on the right.
- Click Create snippet.
The composer closes and your snippet appears in the Snippets panel. Rendering takes a few minutes. You can keep working, or create more snippets in the meantime. The status updates by itself; when it says Ready, click Download.
The fragment
- A snippet is between 10 seconds and 3 minutes long.
- In the composer you can nudge the start and end by half a second at a time, so you don't cut someone off mid-word.
- The snippets you already made show up as faint ranges on the waveform, so you can see which moments you've already used.
The quote
- Type the line people should remember. Keep it under 120 characters for the best result; the maximum is 180. Longer quotes are set in a smaller font.
- Wrap a word in
*asterisks*to give it the accent color, for example:This is the *one thing* I wish I'd known. - Name and Role/title say who is speaking, for example "Sam Jones" and "Guest". Both are optional.
- Leave the quote empty and the snippet has no quote card.
- Use Quote position to place the quote at the top, center or bottom of the video.
Captions from your transcript
If the episode has a transcript, the composer lists its lines, with the lines inside your fragment highlighted.
- Click a line to use it as your quote.
- Switch on Show transcript to show captions in the video: after the quote card, the current sentence is shown while it's spoken. Use Caption position to place them. With captions off, the quote stays on screen for the whole snippet.
No transcript yet? Create one in the Transcripts panel of the episode editor first.
Styles
| Style | What it does |
|---|---|
| Cover | Four color combinations taken from your cover art: Brand, Deep, Light and Duo. Each one shows how readable it is. |
| Own color | Pick your own background, text and accent colors. The contrast check tells you if the text is easy to read, and Make readable adjusts the colors for you when it isn't. |
| Image | Upload an image as the background: JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 20 MB. |
| Video | Upload a video as the background: MP4, MOV or WebM, up to 200 MB. A video shorter than the snippet loops. Choose Fit (the whole video, on a blurred copy of itself) or Fill (the video fills the frame; use Position to choose which part stays visible). |
Below the styles, Show Springcast logo switches the logo on or off. It starts the way your show's branding setting is set.
Springcast remembers the style you used last for each show, so your next snippet starts with the same look. Your quote, name, role and uploaded files are not remembered.
Snippets from the episode video
Does the episode have a video, with video streaming? Then an Audio | Video switch appears above the waveform while the Snippets panel is open (Professional, Scale and Company).
- Audio builds the snippet around the episode audio, as described above.
- Video plays the episode video in the editor. Select your fragment on the video and the snippet uses the video's picture and sound. Your quote, header, waveform and logo are placed on top. In the style column you choose Fit or Fill, the text and accent colors, and the logo.
Captions are only available in video mode when the episode audio was taken from that same video. Otherwise the transcript wouldn't line up with the picture.
When you switch to another panel, the editor goes back to the audio.
What happens after you create a snippet
Every snippet goes through these statuses:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Queued | Your snippet is waiting its turn. |
| Rendering | The video is being made. This usually takes a few minutes. |
| Ready | Click Download to save the MP4. You get a notification in the editor when it's ready. |
| Failed | Something went wrong. Click Try again. |
A few things worth knowing:
- Download as often as you like. Until the snippet expires, you can download it again any time.
- Snippets are kept for 7 days. After that the video is deleted automatically. Each card shows how many days are left, so download the snippets you want to keep.
- You can delete a snippet yourself with Delete on its card.
- A rendered snippet can't be edited. Want a different quote or style? Create a new snippet; your last style is already filled in.
- Up to 10 at once. A show can have at most 10 snippets queued or rendering at the same time. Wait until one is ready and you can create the next.
- Nothing changes in your episode. Snippets don't touch your RSS feed, your player or the episode itself.
Good to know
- Format: MP4 (H.264 video, AAC audio), 1080 × 1920 pixels, 30 frames per second. This fits Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts and LinkedIn without any conversion.
- The video opens on the quote card, so its first frame works well as the cover image when you post it.
- Per episode. Snippets belong to the episode they were made from. You can make as many as you like.
- Who can make them. Anyone who can edit the show and has access to the episode can create, download and delete its snippets.
Common questions
- Where do I find my snippet after creating it?
In the Snippets panel of the episode editor, at the top of the list. The status updates by itself; you don't need to refresh the page. - My snippet is gone.
Snippets are deleted automatically after 7 days. Create it again from the same fragment; your last style is remembered. - I can't select the Video background.
Video backgrounds are available on Professional, Scale and Company. On Essential you can use cover colors, your own colors or an image. - I don't see the Audio | Video switch.
It only appears in the Snippets panel when the episode has a video that has finished processing, on Professional, Scale or Company. - Why are there no captions?
The episode needs a transcript, and Show transcript must be switched on in the composer. In video mode, captions are only available when the episode audio was taken from that video. - The snippet failed.
Click Try again. If you uploaded a background video or image, check that it opens normally on your computer and isn't extremely large (videos up to 4096 pixels wide or high and at most 120 frames per second; images up to 8000 pixels per side). Re-export it in a standard format and create the snippet again. - The preview doesn't play my background video.
Some video formats can't play in your browser. The video still appears in the rendered snippet. - Can I hide the Springcast logo?
On Professional, Scale and Company, yes: switch off Show Springcast logo in the composer. On Essential the logo is always shown.