#whew. okay hope this helps like at least one singular person

[atthebell]

how to clip (redneck edition):

my best methods for clipping & posting to tumblr [edit: updated as of feb 21 2025]

Over the years I've seen a lot of people trying to post clips to Tumblr with varying degrees of success (see @/royalarchivist for the GOAT of posting clips) and this post is meant to help people with clipping and generally how to pull video from various sources to then upload to Tumblr (or elsewhere). You do not have to be tech savvy for any of these; I would by no means call myself tech savvy.

Let's get into it.

Initially this will be focused on pulling clips from streams, specifically Twitch streams, but I also have some tools for other forms of video downloading that are extremely helpful and I'll list those towards the end.

Clip & Download from Twitch

My preferred method for pulling clips straight from Twitch used to be Clipr, but now Twitch lets you do it yourself in two different ways: either downloading as soon as you finish making the clip, or downloading from your Clips Manager page.

Method 1: Downloading off the clip page

At the bottom right of the Twitch video player, click on the "🎬 Clip" button and it will open up a page with the last 30 seconds of the stream clipped, where you can adjust how long the clip should be (up to 60 seconds) and name it. You cannot use profanity or slurs in the titles of clips (including in other languages), but otherwise you can name it whatever the hell you want.

After adjusting the length of the clip, naming it, and confirming, Twitch then makes the clip, providing you with the link and several other options (sharing to various socials, editing it again, etc.). Along with all these options is the option to download the clip, either in landscape or portrait versions. Unless you fiddle with it during the editing, it will probably look weird as hell in portrait form-- that's for if you're uploading the clip to TikTok/Reels/Shorts for whatever reason.

Method 2: Downloading from Clips Manager

There are a couple of ways of getting to your clips manager. First one is to click on your profile photo in the top right of Twitch (whatever page you might be on), then select Creator Dashboard. After it takes you there, you can select Clips on the left menu under Content, and it'll take you to your Clips Manager. It places you on your "Clips of My Channel" page initially, but you can select "Clips I've Created" right next to it, which is where you really want to be. You can also just bookmark the page after the first time you've found it, or you can go to "https://dashboard.twitch.tv/u/atthebell/content/clips/created" but insert your own username where mine is.

Your Clips Manager looks like this. You can see the title of a clip, the game the streamer was playing, the channel, the date the clip was created, the views, and then some sharing and editing options. To download a clip, you want to select "Share," then "Download Landscape Version." This will put it right in your Downloads folder on your computer, and you can upload it wherever you'd like after that point. I'll have some tips for uploading video to Tumblr later in this post.

The reason downloading from Twitch and then uploading the clip to Tumblr yourself is better than just embedding the Twitch clip link into a Tumblr post is that Twitch links don't always display properly on Firefox (same with Instagram links), and it also means that if the clip ceases to exist on Twitch for whatever reason, it's still uploaded to Tumblr (and your computer). You can also guarantee the quality you're downloading in, which is usually 1080p unless the streamer has for some reason lowered their stream quality (happens by accident sometimes).

The con for this method is that if the moment you want to clip is longer than 60 seconds, you have to use another method or try to paste together multiple clips (the latter is something i've only tried a couple times to mixed success; I don't recommend it). Twitch only lets you clip something that long. I bemoan this fact every day.

However, we can go back to the basics to get longer clips (and clips from YouTube):

Screen capture on your computer

The pros of this method are that you aren't limited to 60 seconds, and if you're trying to clip something from a YouTube video, it's easier than trying to download a YouTube clip (have never been able to successfully do this myself) or downloading the entire video and then editing it down to the moment you want to clip.

The cons are that you have to make sure you're not screen capturing sensitive shit from your own computer, and you have to turn off all other audio and make sure your volume levels & video quality are at appropriate levels (aka don't have your volume super low, don't have the video on 480p if possible). If you're clipping off YouTube, you have to deal with having the channel's watermark in the corner, but otherwise it's great for when you want to just clip something from Twitch but it's longer than 60 seconds.

How to do this (on Windows):

Remember to put your computer on Do Not Disturb (Discord as well) and put the video on highest quality and decent volume levels. Press Windows key + G (if that's your configuration) and select "Start Recording" on the capture window. Remember to give time for the scrub bar and shit from YouTube or Twitch (or whatever) to go away, so go back a little bit before where you want the clip to start. Record until you've got what you want, then open it in whatever video editing software pleases you.

You can find the recording in Captures on your computer (usually in some folder chain in Users) or by just pressing Windows key + G again, it'll let you open the recording in file location. I use Microsoft Clipchamp to edit because Windows Media Player crashes my computer and I'm not going to pay for nice editing software rn. Anyway, edit out the bits with you moving your mouse around and the video player UI and get it to whatever length you like. Save or redownload to your computer, upload to Tumblr.

Downloading off Twitter/Instagram/Wherever - Cobalt

There used to be one million websites dedicated to letting you download videos off Twitter; they've had varying success and failure as Twitter has gotten worse and worse the last several years. These days, I use Cobalt. Cobalt is a gift from the gods.

Let's say I want to download this clip CellbitUPD posted to Twitter. There's no way to do this with Twitter's own interface, but with Cobalt, you just copy & paste the link to the tweet into the interface. It opens a version of the video that you can download via right click, and it lets you save it to whatever folder rather than just straight to your Downloads folder. This works for photos and videos on Instagram as well, making it much much easier to grab photos from IG posts. If someone's account is restricted to logged in Instagram users or private, you will not be able to use this method, but otherwise it works for pretty much anything on IG (except stories, since they don't really have their own links) and for many other websites.

If you are downloading a clip someone else made, I recommend attributing said clips, particularly if someone went through the trouble of adding subtitles or you're using their translation (or just to let people know where they came from-- i.e. is this from a cc's own IG story, or is it a random fan recording them; the latter means you maybe shouldn't be reposting this video). Translation itself is often a thankless project so it's very appreciated to acknowledge translators. Also, if someone else went through the trouble of clipping something, it's just nice to acknowledge them for it. Preferably include a link to the original tweet.

Downloading Instagram Stories - StorySaver

Downloading IG stories is one of the truest pains in my ass as an updates blog admin; there are probably several methods out there that work for this, but I usually use StorySaver. It can download both photos and videos from someone's Instagram story, and all you have to do is type in their username.

Uploading Videos to Tumblr: One must imagine Sisyphus happy

Uploading videos to Tumblr is one of the worst experiences I've participated in on social media. It's not fun, it's truly behind the times, and it's a miracle it works at all. I don't recommend becoming someone who frequently uploads video to Tumblr or you might drive yourself insane. However, if you're choosing to ignore my warnings, here's some tips.

It will take a long time. Does not matter how short the clip is, doesn't matter if it's garbage quality, it will take a while. Sit back, go get a snack, open Steam, find something to do in the meantime. If you're uploading anything over a minute, feel free to go on a walk. If you're uploading anything over five minutes, go watch a movie.

The video limit is not a joke. You cannot upload anything over 10 minutes, regardless of quality, and that 500MB limit is also not a joke. You may have to downgrade the quality of a clip to get Tumblr to upload it. You may have to give up entirely and post it to YouTube and link it. You may have to walk into the woods and become a hermit. Possibly all of the above.

If Tumblr says it's saved your post as a draft with the little green bar, and your post includes video, Tumblr is lying. Wait at least another two minutes and then it might cooperate. If it's over five minutes of video, wait at least ten minutes. No, I'm not joking. If Tumblr says "your post is on the way" or whatever the hell it says with the light blue banner, that means it will load and load and load indefinitely because the video has not actually uploaded all the way. You can either wait in limbo for years and grow facial hair in the meantime OR close the tab, wait a few minutes, and see if Tumblr saved the post to your drafts. Yes I know that's completely ass. I would make this website good in a heartbeat if that were something I was capable of.

Use your best judgment on what is appropriate to upload. If something is a leak, may contain private information, involves private individuals (e.g. random people who didn't ask for their face to be uploaded to some website), or breaks Tumblr ToS, don't upload it. If something seems like an edge case and you're not sure, don't upload it. You are not required to post.

Extra fun tips:

If you are a frequent clipper, get in the habit of naming your files. If you're keeping them all on your computer, for organization's sake, it will save you so much time and energy if you just have names on your files. It doesn't have to be anything crazy formal; for example, my format is just "oct 12 cellbit scared by sign tts;" date followed by a very short description.

Similar to the above, it also helps to include some amount of context to clips when you're posting them, particularly if you're not liveblogging. Sometimes people rb clips onto my dash and start freaking out about some kind of lore going on and it's like dude this clip is from two months ago, calm down. Also please turn on timestamps in your account settings, for the love of fuck.

You can download videos straight off Tumblr! If someone else already posted a clip you like and want to have on your computer, you can download it off the dash or off their blog and just have it, no extension or screen capture or website needed. One of the very cool things about this website!

Related, if you really want to find a clip that you know was already posted to Tumblr by someone else, use people's archives. They're also one of the actually functional parts of this website. You can filter by post type, month, and tags, which can usually get you closer to finding what you're looking for than searching will.

RoyalArchivist tends to post and reblog a lot of clips, so they're a good resource alongside myself, pix pixiecaps, and olo theperksofbeingstupid, all of whom clip like maniacs. pix has a whole set of clip archives with dates and POVs, and i have a pretty robust tagging system on my blog. RA also has a timestamp archive for QSMP with notes about lore and things.

MCYT Archive Project has public vods spreadsheets for QSMP as well as other MCYT projects that are incredibly extensive, so if you're looking for a moment and you remember the date, you should be able to find the vod on the sheet. You can also use the vod archives in junction with wiki articles to figure out exactly or approximately when something happened (the QSMP Miraheze wiki includes citations in their articles, which is a massive help for this kind of thing).

TwitchTracker is also a great tool for finding certain VODs/streamtitles/stats, especially if you know the date.

Finally, I am a lunatic who figured this all out through trial and error. There are probably other methods, many other methods. Again, I recommend looking at RA's archiving vods & clips post for more on saving VODs and longer-form video content.

That's everything I can think of this time so go forth and clip 🎬✨