How to Make YouTube Shorts on a Laptop

Creating YouTube Shorts doesn’t have to mean squinting at your phone screen and fumbling with clunky mobile editing apps. If you want more control, higher quality, and a smoother workflow, your laptop is your new best friend for short-form video creation. This guide will walk you through every step of how to make compelling YouTube Shorts on your desktop or laptop, from picking the right software to editing and uploading your finished clip.

Why Bother Making YouTube Shorts on a Laptop?

While making a quick Short on your phone is convenient, moving your workflow to a laptop opens up a world of possibilities and offers some serious advantages. For content creators and brands looking to elevate their short-form video game, the benefits are hard to ignore.

• Precision and Control: A mouse and full-sized screen give you far greater precision than editing with your thumbs. You can make frame-perfect cuts, design intricate text animations, and color-grade your footage with a level of control that mobile apps just can't match.
• Access to Powerful Software: Laptop editing software, even the free options, is lightyears ahead of most mobile apps. You get access to multi-track timelines, advanced effects, better audio mixing, and more robust tools that unlock a higher production quality.
• Easier File Management: Juggling video clips, background music, brand assets, and graphics on a phone can be a nightmare. On a laptop, you can organize all your files in folders, making it simple to find what you need and build a content library for future videos.
• Higher Quality Results: Laptop software gives you full control over your export settings, helping you avoid the quality degradation and strange compression issues that can happen when uploading directly from a phone. You can ensure your Short looks just as crisp and clean as you intended.

The Two Rules Every YouTube Short Must Follow

Before you start editing, you need to understand the simple but non-negotiable requirements for a video to be classified as a Short by YouTube. Get these right, and the algorithm will know exactly what to do with your content.

1. It Must Be Vertical: The video has to be in a vertical aspect ratio. The standard is 9:16, which translates to a resolution of 1080 pixels wide by 1920 pixels tall (1080x1920). A square video (1:1 aspect ratio) can sometimes qualify, but the 9:16 vertical format is the standard and what you should always aim for.
2. It Must Be 60 Seconds or Less: The maximum length for a YouTube Short is 60 seconds on the dot. Anything longer, even by a fraction of a second, will be treated as a regular YouTube video.

As long as you meet these two technical requirements, your uploaded video will be eligible for the Shorts feed.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your First Short on a Laptop

Ready to get started? We'll break down the entire process, moving from choosing your tools to hitting that "publish" button.

Step 1: Pick Your Video Editing Software

The first step is selecting a program to edit your masterpiece. Don't worry, you don't need to spend hundreds of dollars. There are amazing options available for every budget, including free ones that are more than powerful enough for professional-quality Shorts.

• For the Budding Pro (Free): DaVinci Resolve. This is professional-grade editing, color-grading, and audio software that Hollywood studios use... and the basic version is completely free. It has a slightly steeper learning curve, but it’s an incredibly powerful tool that you'll never outgrow.
• For the Social Media Creator (Free): CapCut Desktop. If you’re used to mobile editing apps, CapCut’s desktop version will feel immediately familiar. It's incredibly user-friendly, packed with trendy effects and auto-captioning features, and perfectly optimized for creating short-form vertical video. This is probably the best starting point for most people.
• For the Industry Professional (Paid): Adobe Premiere Pro. If you're already in the Adobe ecosystem, Premiere Pro is the industry standard for a reason. It handles any video format you throw at it and offers unparalleled integration with other Adobe apps like After Effects and Photoshop.

Step 2: Set Up Your Project for Vertical Video

This is arguably the most important step. Before you import any clips, you need to tell your editing software you’re creating a vertical video. Otherwise, you'll end up with a horizontal video with black bars on the sides.

The process is similar in most programs:

1. Create a new project or a new sequence/timeline.
2. Look for the project or sequence settings, usually under "File" or "Project Settings."
3. Find the resolution or frame size settings.
4. Instead of the default 1920x1080 (horizontal), flip the numbers to 1080x1920 (vertical).

Once you’ve done this, your preview window should look like a tall rectangle - the same shape as a phone screen. Now you’re ready to edit.

Step 3: Edit Your Content for Maximum Impact

This is where the magic happens. A great Short is more than just a short clip, it's a fast-paced, engaging piece of content designed to hook a viewer in seconds.

How to Adapt Horizontal Footage

What if you shot your video in a standard horizontal format? No problem. Simply import it into your vertical project. It will appear small in the middle of the vertical frame with large black bars above and below it. To fix this, you'll need to "punch in":

• Select the clip on your timeline.
• Go to the effects controls or transform panel.
• Increase the "Scale" (or "Zoom") until the video fills the screen vertically.
• Adjust the "Position" to reframe your shot, making sure the main subject is centered and clearly visible.

The Editing Essentials: Pacing and the First 3 Seconds

Attention spans on Shorts are brutally short. You need to grab your audience immediately.

• The Hook: Your first 1-3 seconds must be visually interesting, ask a provocative question, or introduce a "problem" that the rest of the video will solve. Don't waste time on a slow intro or branded splash screen.
• Fast Pacing: Keep your cuts tight. Don't let any single shot linger for more than a few seconds unless it’s absolutely essential. Quick cuts, zooms, and dynamic motion keep the viewer tapped in.
• Sub-60 Seconds: Always keep your video's final length under 60 seconds. Trim any unnecessary fluff to get straight to the point.

Add Engaging Text and Captions

A huge percentage of users watch Shorts with the sound off. That makes on-screen text your most valuable tool for communicating your message. A good practice is to create subtitles for any spoken words.

Most editors like CapCut offer an "auto-caption" feature that transcribes your audio for you. Once generated, you can customize the font, colors, and animations to make the text pop. Adding a headline or title card at the beginning can also improve viewership by telling people what the video is about right away.

Music and Sound Design

Audio is half the experience. On a laptop, you have two main options for music:

1. Add Music During the Edit: Use royalty-free music from services like Epidemic Sound or Artlist, or download tracks from YouTube's own Audio Library. This gives you more control over the audio mix and lets you perfectly sync your cuts to the beat of the music. This is the safest approach to avoid copyright issues.
2. Upload Silent and Add Music Later: Alternatively, you can export your video without music and add a trending sound from YouTube's music library during the upload process from your mobile device. This is the only way to tap into popular, copyrighted songs, but a lot of business accounts cannot access a lot of trending songs from the Shorts library for copyright purposes.

Step 4: Export Your Final Video

Once your editing is complete, it’s time to export. Your goal is to create a high-quality video file that's optimized for YouTube. Here are some standard settings that work great:

• Format: MP4
• Codec: H.264 (this is the most common standard)
• Resolution: 1080x1920
• Frame Rate: 24, 30, or 60 FPS (match whatever you shot in)
• Bitrate: For 1080p video, a target bitrate between 8-15 Mbps is plenty.

Save the final MP4 file somewhere you can easily find it on your laptop.

Step 5: Upload Your Short From Your Laptop

Now for the final step. The upload process on a desktop is straightforward and gives you more room to write a proper title and description.

1. Go to YouTube and click the "Create" camera icon at the top right, then select "Upload video."
2. Drag and drop your exported MP4 file into the upload window.
3. Craft a Killer Title: Write a short, punchy title that builds curiosity. While YouTube's system now automatically detects Shorts based on their format and length, it's still good practice to include #shorts in the title or description to give it an extra signal.
4. Write Your Description: Use the description to add context, relevant links, and keywords.
5. Choose a Thumbnail: YouTube will pick a default frame from your video, but you can upload a custom thumbnail you've designed. A sharp, engaging thumbnail can dramatically increase your click-through rate.
6. Add Tags: Include relevant tags to help YouTube understand your video's topic.
7. Publish or Schedule: You can publish your Short immediately or schedule it to go live at a specific time.

Once you hit publish, your Short will be live and ready to make its debut in the Shorts feed!

Final Thoughts

Making YouTube Shorts on your laptop simply gives you more power and creative freedom. While the mobile app is useful for on-the-go clips, this desktop workflow helps you create higher-quality, more polished content that stands out and better represents your brand or creative vision.

As creators who manage multiple social channels, we know that building an efficient video workflow is essential. Creating great content is just one part of the puzzle, you also need a smart plan for publishing it consistently. That’s why our team designed Postbase with a visual calendar that was made for today's short-form video reality. It lets us plan and schedule all our YouTube Shorts, Reels, and TikToks in one go, allowing us to see our entire content strategy at a glance without juggling a bunch of different platforms.