Clips vs Highlights: Which one are better on Twitch

In this article, we explain what is difference between Clip and Highlight on Twitch and which one you should choose for your channel

Table Of Contents

What is the Difference Between Clips and Highlights on Twitch?

The main difference between clips and highlights on Twitch is that clips are short videos that can be made by any Twitch user during the live stream or from the saved past broadcast’s stream. Highlights are video at any duration can only be created by the streamer from the saved stream from VODs.

What are Twitch Clips?

Clips are the short section of your current stream or past broadcast. Anyone can make Clips from your stream, including your viewers. When you see short videos about Twitch streamer moments on YouTube, it’s usually coming from Clips. Video from clips usually has a shorter duration than 1 minute and can easily be uploaded to any social media

How Long do Twitch Clips Last

Twitch Clips will last permanently to all streamers from the regular streamer, affiliated streamer, partnered streamer, and Prime and Turbo user. Streamers can delete saved on their channel. While clips can last permanently, there are many case scenario where Twitch delete clips because the video received DMCA takedown or broke Twitch TOS

When Should You Use Clips on your Twitch Channel?

Streamers should use Clips to recapture any special happen that happen during their stream.

Let’s say you managed to accidentally solo win versus the enemy team on your match, you can capture the hilarious moment using Clips and share it on your Twitch account and other social media account.

Not just you, your viewers can also use Clips to share the moment on social media. Many streamer moment videos shared on YouTube are actually shared by the viewers, not the streamer itself

The great thing about clips is clips are usually shared with a link to the original source. So it’s a great method to promote your channel by sharing your clips on social media

Make sure that the duration of your clip is short. The best duration for Twitch Clips is usually around 30-45 second

What is the Benefit of having Clips on your Twitch Channel?

Twitch streamers can create and share their clips on various social media to promote their channel. Besides common social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you can promote the clips on YouTube and TikTok

Clipping your stream and sharing them can showcase your pro moment or hilarious moment on other social media

Many gamers like to watch their favorite streamer gameplay on YouTube or TikTok instead of Twitch because they don’t want to wait or watch the stream live. If you share the clips, you can gain new viewers and followers from a non-Twitch gamer userbase.

Sharing your clips can make you go viral. Ironically, there are many clips of Tyler1 raging in front of his viewers on YouTube.

Even though a clip of a streamer acting toxic is a bad example, you can easily see the possibility of going viral by using Twitch clips

Because your viewers can also create clips from your stream, even without creating any clips, maybe you can see the clips of your stream circulating on YouTube and TikTok

What are Twitch Highlights

A highlight is part of a video edited from Past Broadcasts content that can be saved on Twitch permanently. Unlike clips, highlights can only be created by streamers that have enabled VODs on their channel. Highlights duration is usually longer than clips without any upper ranges, so it’s more suitable to be uploaded into YouTube

If you want to make Highlights on your channel, you need to enable it first. Open my article on Enabling VOD and making Highlights on your channel

How Long do Twitch Highlight Last

Twitch Highlights will last permanently for all Twitch streamers without any requirement. Streamers can delete highlight saved on their channel in case they need to remove it. Twitch Highlights can be deleted by Twitch the video received DMCA takedown or broke Twitch TOS

When Should You Use Highlights on your Twitch Channel?

Twitch streamers can use highlights to promote their channel to new viewers that browsing their channel. By creating highlights from your best stream, it can give a vision of what kind of streamer you are to new viewers that skim through your channel

Because highlights can last forever, you can use highlight to permanently store your past broadcast’s stream on Twitch

Because Twitch highlights video duration is longer than clips, highlights are the best video content to be uploaded into your YouTube channel.

What is the benefit of creating Highlights?

Creating highlights from your past broadcast allow viewers to access your stream, even after the original stream has already been deleted on Twitch.

Your viewers can watch highlights to catch up on the stream they have missed on your channel

Highlights can be used to promote your channel to new viewers. Sometimes new viewers will scroll your past broadcast video and clips to decide whether they will follow or subscribe to the channel or not

Because of this, it’s best to make highlights as short as possible, so your viewers don’t need to watch your highlights for too long. The best duration for highlights is between 2-3 minutes. Never make highlights longer than 5 minutes unless it’s absolutely needed

Which Twitch Streamer uses most: Clips or Highlights?

After analyzing the top 100 Streamers on Twitch, most streamers use Clips on their channel. Streamers rarely create highlights from their past broadcasts.

There are many reasons why many Twitch streamers don’t create highlights on their channel

The first is they can only create highlight from the finished stream, so most streamer doesn’t have free time after streaming to create highlights

The second reason is in most cases, Clips are better than highlights to showcase their channel.

Shroud not having highlight on his channel

Shroud, a popular CS: GO and Valorant streamer doesn’t even have a highlight on his channel. This is a proof that you don’t need highlight to showcase your channel.

Clips vs Highlights: Which one is better for your Twitch channel

Clips are better than highlights because they are easier to created and can be uploaded to any social media. The major benefit of Clips is any Twitch user can create Clips, so you don’t need to create clips yourself because some of your viewers will clip your stream if something good or funny happen on your stream

Highlights can only be created by streamers and need time to spend to create them. Even if you create the highlights, it doesn’t mean your viewer will watch them

But it can be an advantage that highlights can only be created by the streamer. You can control which part of the past broadcast content you want to convert into a highlight on your channel

But even if this holds true, highlights are more useless compared to clips. It’s better to edit your stream using a video editor so you can upload it to YouTube or any other social media. Highlights that are directly uploaded to YouTube will be of lower quality because there is no thorough editing on the content of the stream

How to Create Clips from your Stream

You can choose to create clips from your current live stream or your past broadcast content

To make clips from your current live stream:

On your live stream, click the Clip icon at the bottom right, beside the gear icon. You can use the keyboard shortcut: Alt + X on for Windows or Command + X for Mac computer.
On the clip creation page, select which part of the video you want to convert into clips.
Choose your Clips title and click Publish button
You can choose to share the clips on your social media

To make clips from the past broadcast:

Go to your channel VODs by clicking your profile image and then click “Video Producer” from the menu
Select the video you want to choose to create clips from
Go to the part of the video you choose then click the clip button

How to create clips as a viewer on Twitch

There is no difference in the step to create Clips on Twitch as a viewers

On the stream you choose, click the Clip Button
Select the segment of the stream you want to include into the clips
Fill in the title of the clip and then click Publish button

Beware that clips created by viewers can’t be viewed by the streamer unless you give the link to the streamer

How to Create Clips on Twitch Mobile App

It’s easy to make clips on Twitch mobile app.

On iOS:

Open the app and log in to your account.
Open the stream you want to create clips.
Click the Share button and choose to Create Clip from the bottom menu that appeared
Choose which part of the stream that will be included into the clips
Don’t forget to type the clip’s title

On Android:

Open Twitch Mobile app
Open the stream you want to create clips.
Click Create Clip button on the bottom part of the video player
Configure the Clips and don’t forget to fill in the clip title

How to View Saved Clips on Twitch

Click your profile image, Click the “Video Producer” submenu
Click the “Videos” menu and Click the “Clips” section
All your saved clips will be shown on the screen

For a web shortcut to view saved clips on your account, you can open this link:

After clicking the clip icon or using the keyboard shortcut, a new clip creation

How to Delete Saved Clips on Twitch

Twitch make it easy to delete clips on your channel, especially after Twitch enforcing DMCA rule. It’s easy to delete clips on Twitch, just follow the step below:

Click your profile image
Select Video Producer Sub Menu
Select the “Videos” menu then click “Clips”
Choose the clips you want to delete by checklist the box, then click the trash icon to delete all the clips you choose
You can also selectively delete clips by clicking the triple dot menu at the right then click “Delete Video”

How to Download Clips on Twitch

If you want to download clips, you can use online tools that can easily create a download link for the Clips on Twitch

1. Clipsey

Clipsey let you download video from Twitch for free.

Open Clipsey at: https://clipsey.com/
Just copy the link and click the “Download Clip” Button
Wait until a download notification appear on your web browser

Clipsey also have a chrome extension you can download to download clips instantly on your web browser

Besides Clipsey, you can use Clipr and Clip Ninja to easily download Clips from Twitch. All three websites only require you to input the link without asking to log in or pay for their service

2. Clip Ninja

Open Clip Ninja website at: https://clip.ninja/
Paste the link and click “Submit”
Accept the download notification on your web browser

3. Clipr

Open Clipr website at: https://clipr.xyz/
Paste the Twitch link and click “Get Download Link”
Wait for Clipr to process the clip and then click the “Click to Download” button

Storing Clips on your PC

Because Clips can take your storage drive space, I recommend storing it on your HDD instead of the SDD.

But if you have no space on your internal HDD, I suggest you get an external HDD to store all the Clips you need to download.

My go-to go recommendation for external HDD to store Seagate Portable Hard Drive and WD My Passport that is great to store your games and Twitch clips on your computer

How to Delete Created Highlights on your Twitch Channel

Deleting highlights is as easy as deleting clips on your channel

Follow the steps below:

Click your profile image at the top right corner of your screen
Click “Video Producer”
Select the “Videos” menu then click “Highlight” to show all highlights on your channel
Choose the Highlight you want to delete by checklist the video, then click the trash icon to delete all the highlights you choose
Or you can click the triple dot icon at the right corner of the video then click “Delete Video” to selectively highlight on your channel

Should you delete highlights on your Twitch channel?

The highlights video on your channel will last indefinitely, so it will never be deleted unless you decided to delete them or the video broke Twitch TOS (including getting DMCA takedown)

Because most Twitch streamers rarely create a highlight on their channel, the only time I heard streamer delete their highlight is because after they received DMCA notice on their channel.

According to Dexerto, many Twitch streamers are forced to delete clips and highlights on their channel simply because they feared to get DMCA takedown on their channel

So if your highlights are at a risk to get DMCA takedown, then consider deleting it immidiately

Sources:

Clips vs Highlights: Which one are better for your Twitch channel