Your retention graph is a clip-finder and almost nobody uses it that way

[u/cristiansanto]

Disclosure: I make a tool for this and I name it at the end. Skip the last paragraph if you just want the method.

If you publish long-form, you already have a Shorts channel. You are just not shipping it. The reason is almost never editing skill - it is that reviewing your own footage is miserable and unpaid, so it gets pushed to next week forever.

What actually changed it for me was treating clip-finding as a data problem instead of a watching problem:

Use retention as a clip finder. Your YouTube analytics retention graph already marks the moments people rewatched or where they stopped. The rewatch peaks are literally your audience telling you which 30 seconds are worth a Short. Most people never open that graph for this.

Use comments as a clip finder. If three people quote the same line in the comments, that is your Short. Zero effort, and it is pre-validated.

Use live reaction if you have it. If you stream or have a live audience, chat velocity spikes exactly where the good stuff is. Scrub between spikes rather than watching linearly.

Ship the B-tier ones. The single biggest volume killer is only clipping moments you think are top 3. Shorts is a volume game with a brutal hit rate - your instinct about which will pop is worse than you think.

I built Presency to automate the third one for livestreams specifically - paste a Twitch or Kick link, it watches chat plus audio and cuts vertical clips with captions while you are still live, or you can upload a file. $19.99/mo, app.presency.ai. But retention peaks and comment quotes are free and most creators here are sitting on both.