Creating your first project

A project in PublishFi is the container for a piece of content. It holds your source media, the clips generated from it, any edits you make, and the settings that govern how everything is processed. This guide walks you through creating one from scratch, so you understand every option before you click Generate.

Step 1: Open the Create tab

After signing in, you'll land on the main dashboard. The top of the screen shows three tabs: Create, Schedule, and Search. Make sure you're on the Create tab — this is where all your projects live.

Click New Project to start a new one. A prompt bar appears at the top of the page.

Step 2: Describe what you want

The prompt bar is where you tell PublishFi what kind of clips to make from your footage. Type a natural-language description of your goal. Some examples:

"Create a YouTube Short from the best moments in this interview"
"Make a 60-second highlight reel for LinkedIn"
"Extract the funniest moments and package them as vertical clips for TikTok"

You can be as specific or as general as you like. CoDirector uses your prompt alongside the content settings below to decide how to cut and structure the clips.

Tip: You can also type @ in the prompt bar to pull up a quick-select menu. This lets you tag your uploaded files, specify clip lengths, choose platforms, and set other options inline without opening separate settings panels.

Step 3: Configure your clip settings

Below the prompt field, a set of settings lets you shape how the clips are generated. None of them are required — PublishFi will use sensible defaults — but taking a moment to fill them in produces better results.

Clip length — Choose a target duration for your output clips. Options range from under 30 seconds all the way up to 10–15 minutes. There is also an Auto option that lets the AI decide the right length based on the content.

Genre — Tell PublishFi what kind of content this is. The available genres include Podcast, Vlog, Interview, Talking head & Speech, Motivational speech, Marketing & Webinar, Sports (with subcategories like Basketball and Soccer), Entertainment, Informative & Educational, Gaming, and many more. Choosing the right genre helps the AI make more contextually appropriate cuts and edits.

Layout — Controls how your video fills the output frame. Options include:

Fill — zooms and crops to fill the entire frame
Fit — letterboxes the video to preserve all content
Split — divides the frame horizontally, useful for dual-camera setups
Three and Four — multi-panel layouts for showing multiple angles at once
ScreenShare — optimized for screen recording content

Crop aspect ratio — Determines how your source video is cropped before being placed in the output frame. You can keep the original ratio, crop to 4:3, or crop to square (1:1).

Platform frame — The aspect ratio you're targeting for output. You can choose a standard ratio (Wide 16:9, Vertical 9:16, Square 1:1, Portrait 4:5, Tall 2:3) or a specific platform format such as YouTube Short, Instagram Reel, TikTok Post, LinkedIn Post, Facebook Story, Pinterest Standard, Snapchat Story, Spotify Clip, Reddit Ad, and more.

Step 4: Add your source media

PublishFi needs something to work with. You can either upload a file from your computer or import one from a URL.

To upload: Click the upload area in the prompt bar and choose your file, or drag and drop it directly. Supported formats include MP4, WebM, and MOV for video; MP3, WAV, OGG, and M4A for audio; and JPEG, PNG, GIF, and WebP for images.

To import from a URL: Click the link icon in the prompt bar to open the URL import dialog. PublishFi supports YouTube, Rumble, Loom, Twitch, Apple Podcasts, direct MP3 links, and RSS feed URLs. Paste your link and click Submit.

If your uploaded video is longer than two minutes, a trim dialog will appear before the file is added. Use it to select the segment you want to bring into the project — you can scrub through the video and set precise start and end points.

You can add multiple source files to a single project. If you are adding to a project that already has media, you will see your existing files listed in the prompt bar alongside the upload and import options.

Step 5: Generate clips

Once your prompt is written, your settings are configured, and at least one source file is attached, click Generate. PublishFi sends everything to CoDirector, which analyzes your footage and creates a set of clips based on your instructions.

A notification confirms that generation has started. The clips will appear in the project grid below the prompt bar as they finish processing. Each clip can be opened in the editor for further refinement.

Tip: You can keep generating more clips from the same project at any time. Just update the prompt, adjust the settings if needed, and click Generate again. New clips are added to the project alongside your existing ones.

What happens next

Once a clip is ready, click it in the project grid to open it in the full video editor. From there you can refine the cut using the transcript, adjust the timeline, add music and motion graphics, work with CoDirector to apply further AI edits, and export your final video.