Monitoring a live stream

Give ClipHeat a channel: it watches it and turns it into clips without you having to come back.

Twitch and Kick: ClipHeat captures the stream in segments and cuts them while it broadcasts. All the clips from one stream land in a single project.
YouTube: ClipHeat watches for new videos uploaded to the channel (not YouTube live streams). Each new video is processed like an ordinary generation and gets its own project.

The Live Monitor screen, in the Distribute group. Included in the Studio plan — see the pricing page.

The screen has three tabs:

Tab	What it holds
Watch	The running watch, and what you need to start one. It’s the tab you land on.
My list	The channels you follow, to watch in one click.
Settings	The settings of the next watch: destinations, review, clips per segment, brand template, advanced settings.

Starting a watch

Watch tab: choose the platform — Kick, Twitch or YouTube — then the channel: see Finding the channel.
Click Monitor.

That’s it. Under the channel, one line sums up what the watch will start with — by default Clips go to Projects · reviewed first · 5 clips per segment. Change opens the Settings tab, where you choose:

Publish to: the connected accounts that will receive the clips;
Clips kept per segment and Publish without review;
the Brand template — see A watch’s brand template;
Advanced settings: segment length, instructions, best-of, viewer clips, framing, layout…

Your choices are kept when you switch tabs. The watch’s card appears at the top of the Watch tab.

Filing in a collection

The File in field, on the Watch tab as on My list, picks the collection of the stream’s project. No collection by default; New collection… creates one on the spot. Every captured segment joins the stream’s project, hence the collection. The choice holds even if ClipHeat restarts during the watch; it can’t be changed mid-way — file or unfile the project from its “…” menu in Projects.

Under the button, Duration, stop and cost expands the limits in detail — see What stops a watch.

The channel doesn’t need to be live. See Starting before the stream.

From the website’s home page, the A live stream tab leads to this screen with the channel already filled in. Nothing starts until you click Monitor.

Starting before the stream

On Twitch and Kick, start the watch before the channel goes live — the day before, or in the morning for an evening stream. ClipHeat checks every minute whether the channel is live and starts capturing on its own.

The card shows “Waiting for {channel} to go live — checked every minute · expires in N days”.
Nothing is captured or charged while the channel is offline.
The wait lasts seven days at most. If the channel hasn’t streamed by then, the watch stops and the screen says so; start it again before the next stream.
The twelve hours of the maximum duration only start with the capture: time spent waiting doesn’t eat into them.
A waiting watch resumes on its own if ClipHeat restarts (update, maintenance).

A watch follows one stream. When it ends, the watch stops; it doesn’t restart for the next stream.

My watch list

Keep the channels you clip often in the My list tab: their picture, their platform, and Live or Offline.

Add: search for the channel in the Watch tab (see below), then Add next to the result. Twitch and Kick only.
Watch: starts watching that channel in one click, live or not, and takes you back to the Watch tab. It uses the Settings tab’s choices (by default: clips in your projects, each one reviewed by you).
Remove (bin icon): takes it off the list. A running watch isn’t stopped.

The list keeps 20 channels at most. Adding starts nothing and costs nothing.

Finding the channel

Type the channel’s name; the search starts from the second letter. You can also paste the channel’s address (twitch.tv/…, kick.com/…): the platform and the name fill in on their own.

Platform	What the search does
Twitch	Up to eight channels close to the typed name, with their picture and Live now (and the viewer count) when they are streaming.
Kick	Shows the channel whose name matches exactly what you type, or nothing.
YouTube	No search: enter the channel’s @handle or UC… identifier.

Click the channel you want to select it. Change clears the field so you can pick another. Add puts it in your watch list.

The search never blocks the start: you can always click Monitor with the typed name.

“No … channel” — nothing matches that name. Check the spelling.
“Search is unavailable” or “Search is not responding” — the platform could not be queried. It does not mean the channel does not exist: if you are sure of the name (the one in the address, as in twitch.tv/zerator), start the watch with that name.

A watch’s brand template

The Brand template field appears if your account has at least one. It dresses every clip of the watch: subtitles, hook, logo.

Account default template: the watch follows your account’s default template.
A named template: that one, even if the default changes.

You can change it during the watch, from its card: the new template applies to the next segments; clips already produced keep theirs.

See Brand templates.

During the watch

The card shows:

the state: Waiting for the stream (the channel isn’t live yet — with when the wait expires), Capturing, Idle (nothing to capture for now), Stopped or Interrupted;
the current segment and its progress;
Captured segments and Published clips, and the clips waiting for your review;
the cost (see below);
once the stream is being captured, the time elapsed and the time left before the automatic stop;
the brand template and the Publish without review switch.

Three buttons: See the clips, Change the settings, Stop monitoring.

In Change the settings, Publish on my slots places the stream’s clips on your posting slots (Publishing › Slots): a three-hour stream is then published over the following days, at your times, one clip per free slot. With no free slot, the clip goes out at the best time, as before. See Publishing.

Your viewers’ clips

On Twitch, your chat already clips during the stream. Turn on Viewer clips in the watch settings: when the stream ends, those clips go through ClipHeat — reframed, subtitled, styled with your template — and join the stream’s project, most viewed first (5 by default, up to 20). A moment ClipHeat already clipped is not redone. Each clip is billed at its duration, one minute minimum; they get no generated hook.

The channel’s layout

A streamer wants their webcam on top and their game below, in the same place on every clip. Draw it once in the editor, on a clip from the stream (Reframe tab, Split screen or Fixed frame), then Use for the whole channel: the following segments are rendered with it. The settings drawer shows it, and lets you remove it.

Clip framing

By default, every clip from a stream is reframed to 9:16 around what matters, like a regular video. In the settings, Clip framing also offers Whole image with bars: the whole stream image between two black bars, the hook on top and the subtitles below, with a zoom to fill them. Changed during a watch, the framing applies to the following segments. A channel layout takes precedence over both.

The cost

A stream’s length is not known in advance, so ClipHeat cannot announce a total. The screen shows the rate and the limits that stop the watch.

Each segment is billed like a generation: per minute of video, at the end of the segment. The number of clips kept does not change the amount.

The card shows, in credits:

This stream’s cost — the credits and minutes already billed;
Stream rate — the cost of one captured hour, and the estimated total if the stream lasts until the planned stop: what is already billed, plus this rate for the time left. A watch started on a stream already under way first catches up on what was broadcast: its first minutes bill quickly, without changing the rate for what follows.

See Credits.

What stops a watch

When a watch stops on its own, the screen says why.

Cause	Detail
You	Stop monitoring, at any time.
The maximum duration	12 hours of capture per stream, counted from the start of the capture, then an automatic stop with a notification. A channel that streams longer is only followed for the first twelve hours; start again by hand to continue.
The wait	7 days: a watch started before the stream stops if the channel hasn’t gone live by then. Nothing was captured or charged.
The analysis budget	Each watched stream has an analysis cap. The card warns you when it gets close.
Your plan	If it no longer includes monitoring. Clips already produced remain.
Your credits	Checked before each segment: if the balance no longer covers the next one, the watch stops without starting it, and nothing is charged for it.
Your storage	Checked before each segment: a full space stops the watch. Free up room, then start it again.

One active watch per account. Starting another offers to stop the one that’s running.

The chat, as a hint

On a YouTube video, ClipHeat uses the rewatch curve. A live stream has none. On Twitch, ClipHeat reads the chat activity during the capture instead: when it takes off, something just happened.

The chat steers the analysis, it does not cut: the moments it points to are widened, especially backwards, since the chat reacts after the fact.
It is ignored when it adds nothing: a channel that is too quiet, a spike from a single viewer or a bot, a chat that is busy all the time. The analysis then relies on speech alone, with no loss of quality.
Kick and YouTube do not use this signal.

Privacy: ClipHeat only counts messages. The text of messages is neither kept nor sent anywhere. The username is only used to check that a spike comes from several people. Replay chat is not read.

What comes out

Twitch and Kick: one project per streamer. All the segments, and every later stream from the same channel, make a single card in Projects, titled “{channel} live · {date}” — without the date once it gathers several streams.

Opening it shows its clips in one grid, like a generation, the best virality score first. While the watch runs, new clips arrive with each segment.
Renaming it, from its “…” menu. An empty name restores the original title.
Deleting it deletes all its segments.

YouTube: one project per new video, like a generation started by hand.

The clips can be edited in the editor and published like the rest. See Your projects.

Before you start

An offline channel is not an error. The watch goes Waiting for the stream and starts capturing as soon as the stream begins, up to seven days later (on YouTube, it waits for the next video).
Quality depends on speech. A silent stream, or one covered in music, yields few clips.
A watch uses credits without you clicking. Keep an eye on the cost shown on the card.