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How to schedule YouTube Shorts, and what makes a video a Short

There is no Shorts switch when you upload to YouTube, and there does not need to be: YouTube looks at the video and decides. This is what it looks for, how to schedule a Short in SPREVA, and how to get ten of them out of one long recording.

Rodolfo Mota

Rodolfo MotaFounder of SPREVA

The short version

Upload a vertical or square video of three minutes or less, and YouTube shows it as a Short; nothing else marks it. In SPREVA, choose Video Post, pick your YouTube channel, give the video a title, set Privacy to public, and schedule it or add it to a queue. At that time SPREVA uploads it and follows it until YouTube has finished processing it.

What makes a video a Short

YouTube decides from the video itself:

  • Vertical or square. Taller than it is wide, or as tall as it is wide. 1080 by 1920 pixels is the usual size.
  • Three minutes or less. Longer than that, it is a regular video, whatever its shape.
  • No hashtag required. #Shorts in the title can help people find it, but it is not what makes it a Short.

When a video looks like a Short, SPREVA says so under the thumbnail field, so you know which feed it will land in before it goes out.

Scheduling a Short, step by step

  1. 1

    Press New in the sidebar, choose Post, then Video Post.

  2. 2

    Pick your YouTube channel, and any other account the same video should go to: TikTok takes it as a video, Instagram as a Reel.

  3. 3

    Add the video and write the title, up to 100 characters. Without one, SPREVA uses the first line of your text.

  4. 4

    In the YouTube settings, set Privacy to public: a new upload starts as private. If the video was made with AI, turn on Label as AI-generated.

  5. 5

    Schedule it, or Add to queue. If the connection drops during the upload, SPREVA picks it up where it stopped instead of starting again.

The details that trip people up

Three things YouTube does its own way:

  • The thumbnail. A custom thumbnail (JPEG or PNG, up to 2 MB) shows in search, on the home page and in subscriptions. The Shorts feed and your channel's Shorts tab show a frame YouTube picks.
  • The description is measured in bytes. 5,000 of them: an emoji or an accented letter takes more than one. SPREVA counts the same way and warns you first.
  • No angle brackets. YouTube refuses < and > in a title or a description, and SPREVA tells you before it uploads.

Ten Shorts from one long video

Most Shorts are cut from something longer: a podcast, a stream, a talk. In SPREVA's Studio, Clips from a video finds the moments in a long recording and makes up to 10 vertical clips of 3 seconds to 3 minutes, with the captions burned in.

A vertical clip made in SPREVA's Studio: a coffee cupping, with its caption burned into the picture.
A vertical clip from Studio, captions included, ready to go out as a Short

Each clip stays an editable project, so a caption or a cut can change before it is exported. With an AI agent connected to SPREVA, the whole week is one request:

Ask your agent
Make five vertical clips from yesterday's podcast episode, each under a minute, with captions. Give each a title and schedule them as YouTube Shorts on weekdays at 6pm next week. Show me the titles first.

How to cut a podcast or a stream into clips.

What comes back

Each Short's numbers come back into SPREVA with the rest of your posts: views, likes and comments, and, where YouTube shares them with SPREVA, watch time, average view duration, shares and subscribers gained.

Schedule next week's Shorts

Connect your YouTube channel, add three vertical videos and schedule them, or cut them from one long recording in Studio. Every plan starts with a 7-day trial, with 10 minutes of Studio exports.

Questions

Is there a Shorts setting in SPREVA?

No, because YouTube has none: it decides from the video's shape and length. SPREVA shows a note when a video looks like a Short.

How long can a YouTube Short be?

Up to three minutes. A vertical video longer than that is shown as a regular video.

Why did my video upload as private?

A new YouTube upload in SPREVA starts as private. Set Privacy to public in the YouTube settings before you schedule it.

Can the same video go to TikTok and Instagram Reels?

Yes, in the same post. Each account can have its own text, and YouTube its own title.

Which plan do I need?

Scheduling to YouTube works on every plan. Making clips in Studio needs Pro or Business, and the 7-day trial includes 10 minutes of exports.

Written by

Rodolfo Mota

Rodolfo Mota

Founder of SPREVA

Makes SPREVA in Portugal: the Studio, the tools an agent works with, and the publishing behind them.

From your next idea to a published video.