Clips by Plastic

Clips by Plastic is a lyric and lip-sync video maker for Mac, built for music artists who want to promote a finished song with vertical video ads. You drop in a song and Clips finds its tempo and every part — verses, pre-chorus, chorus and bridge — then cuts each part and its catchiest snippets into its own vertical video, on the beat, with the lyrics synced word by word. From there you choose a layout, add a hook line on top, pick one of 54 effects, and export every part on every backdrop at once. The files come out named by song, part and backdrop, ready to upload to Ads Manager. Clips is aimed at artists promoting their own releases, and at labels and studios making videos for a roster or for clients. The problem Clips was built around is stated plainly on its own site: making fifteen videos takes all evening, so you cut two and pray. Rather than guessing which section of a track is the part that actually sells it, Clips lets an artist produce a video for every part of the song and then test them. The site describes the workflow as test first, then spend: run every part for a week with a few dollars a day each, let strangers pick the winner, and put your budget behind the part that wins. In the site's own worked example, the intro beat the chorus on cost per result, which is exactly the kind of finding a guess would have missed. The app was built by Kai Williams, a music artist with 30K monthly listeners on Spotify, who says he built Clips while promoting his album because cutting the same song fifteen ways was eating the time he wanted for music. The first step is dropping in a finished song. Clips finds the tempo — shown in the interface as BPM, for example 124 BPM on a three-minute-fifty-two-second track — and detects every part of the arrangement, listed as Verse 1, Pre, Chorus, Verse 2, Chorus and Bridge in the site's example. Each detected part then becomes one clip, cut on the beat; the product's own illustration shows a Chorus of 16 beats, cut on the beat. You then pick the parts you want to turn into videos, so a single song can yield a whole set of separate vertical clips instead of one long edit. There is no timeline to work on, which is the point of the design: the arrangement and cutting work that would normally consume an evening is done for you once the song is imported. The next step is the lyrics. Clips syncs the words to the music and can present them either word by word or line by line, both on the beat, and the interface exposes a simple Word / Line switch for that choice. You can also add a hook line on top — a short phrase that sits above the lyric treatment throughout the clip, shown in the site's mockups as a repeating line over the synced lyrics. Combined with a layout choice, this is what gives each clip its shape: a vertical frame, a lyric treatment that moves with the music rather than against it, and a hook that carries the catchiest fragment of the song. Because the sync is handled automatically, the artist does not have to hand-time individual words against a waveform. Clips ships 54 effects to give each batch a look that matches the release rather than a template. The site names a set of them — Paper, Glow, Vertigo, Riso, Xerox, Tape, Bitmap, Lines, Heatwave, Drift and Negative — and describes the concept as the same chorus rendered 54 different ways. A Strength control, set by dragging, determines how strong the effect is applied, with values like 3 shown in the interface. Effects are applied on the beat, tied to the detected BPM, so visual changes land with the music. On top of that, backdrops can come from your own footage or photos: Clips animates stills, and the site notes that one phone clip is enough for a batch, or you can download free high-quality vertical videos from Pexels that match the mood of the song. The fourth step is export, and it is where the batch approach shows. Clips exports every part of the song on every backdrop at once — the site's headline claim is 15 ads at once — with a progress indicator counting up from 0 of 15 videos cut. Output is vertical video at 1080 × 1920, or square at 1080 × 1080. Each file is named by song, part and backdrop so that the batch is identifiable and ready for Ads Manager without renaming by hand. The site frames the whole journey as ads in minutes, from a finished song to a full batch, with no timeline involved at any stage. The overall approach is a fixed four-step pipeline rather than a general-purpose editor: drop your song, pick the parts, add your hook, export. Everything runs locally — Clips works offline and your unreleased song never leaves your Mac, which the site answers directly when asked whether an unreleased song is uploaded anywhere. There is no cloud round-trip and no subscription machinery: the site promises no subscription, no credits and no caps. That combination of an offline Mac app and a batch pipeline is what separates Clips from a video editor, where the same job is done by hand, and from cloud-based ad makers, as set out in the product's comparison table. The stated outcome for users is speed and evidence. Instead of spending an evening cutting a couple of videos and hoping, an artist gets a full set of on-beat, lyric-synced vertical ads in one export and can then let performance data decide where the money goes. The site's example week shows cost per result for each part — intro, verse 1, pre, chorus, verse 2, bridge — with the intro winning at $0.21 and the chorus landing at $0.63, and the conclusion that you should put your budget behind the winner. Because every part and every backdrop is exported in one pass, testing more variants costs almost nothing in extra time, which is the core benefit the product is selling. Concrete use cases named on the site include launching a release by uploading the whole batch to Ads Manager on day one and letting it run through day six, then keeping the winner on day seven. Artists without footage are covered: photos work, Clips animates stills, and a single phone clip is enough for a batch. Artists between releases can use the free version, which does not expire, to try the app on an old song. Labels and studios can produce videos for the artists they manage, sign or work for under the Label / Studio license, which covers client and commercial work. Pricing is straightforward. The free version costs $0, includes every feature and unlimited exports, adds a small Clips tag on exports, and has no time limit. The Artist license is $99 paid once, removes the Clips tag, covers up to 3 of your own Macs and includes free updates. The Label / Studio license is $299 once, covers up to 10 Macs for your team, allows client and commercial work, and adds priority email support. A bundle with the DOT app is $125 once and unlocks both apps for up to 3 of your own Macs with free updates. A 30-day refund is offered with no questions, and the license key comes with the receipt. Requirements are macOS 13 or later on Apple silicon or Intel, with lyric sync best on macOS 26; Clips is Mac only today. In short, Clips turns one finished song into a batch of on-beat, lyric-synced vertical videos in minutes, so an artist can test every part of the release and spend behind the one that actually sells it — offline, paid once, with no subscription.