Turn your ideas, clips, or topics into clean countdown videos with polished pacing, captions, and transitions.
No editing skills required. List your items, let AI build the countdown, and export in minutes.
Type your five items or topics. Add descriptions and let AI find the visuals.
GhostShorts creates transitions, adds voiceover, and formats the countdown.
Download your polished countdown video and post to TikTok, YouTube, or Reels.
Voice, images, scripts and captions are included on every plan, within fair-use limits. AI credits pay for motion, premium models and extra redos.
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Made a Reddit story short in the middle of my chem class. 100K views before I got home.
Honestly thought this was just another overhyped AI tool. But it actually delivers and is super easy to use. I already created 10 shorts in 1 day.
Tried a couple viral formats on the app. A month later... 10 million views. This app is stupid easy to use.
Making edits CapCut felt homeworkish. GhostShorts is easy af, almost feels likes I am on autopilot.
All I do is copy a Reddit post, paste it in, export, done. It's stupid easy.
Used to doom scroll all night. Now I post the same type of videos I used to binge.
I run a few fake text story channels. Jesus I've hit over 5 million likes on just one of my channels alone. It's ridiculous.
GhostShorts saved me countless hours of editing time. Highly recommended!
I cut my content creation time by 80% after switching to GhostShorts. It's the only tool that actually keeps up with how fast I work.
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The same template runs through the GhostShorts API and MCP server. Connect it once and ask your assistant for a video; it comes back as a finished MP4 on the same plan and credits.
claude mcp add --transport http ghostshorts https://api.ghostshorts.com/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer <your API key>"Ranking videos are built around one question: what made the top spot? The moment a viewer reads "Top 5 craziest moments of the year", an open loop starts. They want to see the winner, and the only way to get there is to watch everything before it. That pull keeps people watching to the end, and watch time is what short-form platforms reward.
There is a second force at work. Once someone has seen the first entry of a list, leaving halfway feels like walking out of a movie before the ending. A clear numbered structure makes the progress visible, so viewers always know how close they are to the payoff.
Rankings also start arguments, in the best way. Every list is debatable, and viewers say so: "How is this not number one?" or "You forgot the best one." Those comments and shares bring the video to people who would never have found it otherwise, and the format produces them without you having to bait anyone.
Finally, the format works in almost any niche. Gaming, sports, streamers, food, pets, products, travel: anything you can rank becomes a list video. The structure stays the same, only the clips change.
A Top 5 video in GhostShorts is built from your own clips, so the strongest formats are the ones where you already have, or can easily film, the footage. Here are the variations that show up again and again in short-form feeds.
| Format | Niche | Hook style |
|---|---|---|
| Best moments | Streamers, podcasts, sports, events | "Top 5 moments from this stream" |
| Funniest or wildest | Gaming, pets, comedy, fails | "Ranking the funniest fails, wait for the last one" |
| Worst to best | Food, gadgets, movies, travel | "Ranking every [item] I tried from worst to best" |
| Tier list | Gaming, anime, sports teams | "Ranking the top 5 [characters, weapons, players]" |
| Product picks | Tech, beauty, fitness, home | "My top 5 [products] this year" |
| Before you buy or visit | Local spots, restaurants, travel | "Top 5 places in [city] you need to try" |
The "wait for the last one" hook is the strongest of these for retention, but it makes a promise. If your final clip does not deliver, viewers feel tricked and say so in the comments. Use it when your top pick really is the best thing in the video.
The Top 5 template takes the parts of a ranking video that eat editing time (the numbered list, the colors, the trims, the finale) and builds them for you. You bring the clips and the titles.
Upload new clips or pick them from your library. They play in the order you set, and the last clip is your top pick.
Choose where each clip starts and how long it runs, or use the 3, 5 and 8 second quick lengths. Your original file is never changed.
A countdown title of up to 100 characters sits at the top, and each clip gets its own title of up to 60 characters in the numbered list.
Pick Fire, Ice or Mono. Rank colors shift as the list builds, with the hottest color on your final clip. Title fonts: Bangers, Anton, Impact or Bebas Neue.
Add a bass-boost punch as your top pick reveals, show the upcoming numbers stacked on screen, and fill the frame with a blurred copy of the active clip.
Upload a sound effect to play at every transition or only at the start, and a background track that loops under the whole video with its own volume.
The finished video exports as a vertical 1080 x 1920 MP4, ready for TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.
The best ranking topics share three things: people have opinions about them, people search for them, and each entry looks different on screen. Here is how that plays out in the biggest niches.
Gaming audiences live for rankings. Top plays, hardest bosses, most broken weapons, funniest glitches. If you record your own gameplay, every session is raw material for a Top 5, and gamers will argue about your order in the comments for days.
Long streams and episodes hide their best moments in hours of footage. Pulling the top five into one short is one of the easiest ways to give fans the highlights and send new viewers to the full version.
Sports fans consume rankings constantly: best goals, biggest saves, wildest finishes. If you film your own league, club or training sessions, a weekly Top 5 is a simple recurring series that players and parents share.
Product rankings help people decide what to buy, which makes them useful as well as entertaining. Film each product yourself and rank them honestly; viewers can tell when a list is just an ad.
Every dish, street or viewpoint looks different, which keeps each entry visually fresh. "Top 5 things to eat in [city]" works for creators and for local businesses showing off their own menu.
Search "top 5" plus your niche on TikTok or YouTube and sort by recent uploads to see what is getting views this week. Community spaces like subreddits and Discord servers are full of arguments about what is best, and every argument is a ranking waiting to happen.
A list about this week's news gets a spike and then dies. A list about the best beaches, the greatest goals or the hardest bosses keeps finding viewers for months. If you are building a library, lean evergreen and save news lists for when something big happens in your niche.
Yes, and the format has a few routes to revenue. The videos you make with GhostShorts are yours to post and monetize, but the platforms have their own rules about what counts.
YouTube and TikTok both run revenue programs with follower and view thresholds. The exact numbers change, so check each platform's current requirements before you plan around them. Ranking videos help on the way there because they hold attention and give people a reason to follow for the next list.
Platforms look closely at compilations. Videos stitched together from other people's clips with nothing added can be treated as reused or unoriginal content and may not qualify for revenue, and they can draw copyright claims. Your strongest position is your own footage, or footage you have permission to use, with your own ranking and titles on top.
A ranking gives a product a natural spot in the video, which brands like. If a placement is paid, disclose it the way each platform requires. Businesses also use the format on their own accounts, for example "Top 5 things our customers order", because a list feels like entertainment rather than an ad.
You can build a Top 5 video in any editing app. Plenty of creators start that way. Here is where the time goes, and what the template does for you.
| Step | Manual editing | GhostShorts Top 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Numbered list overlay | Design the list graphic and update it for every entry | The numbered list and titles are built and updated automatically |
| Rank colors | Pick and apply a color for each entry | Choose a theme and the colors shift from entry to entry for you |
| Trimming | Cut every clip on a timeline | Set a start point and length per clip, or tap a quick length |
| Transitions and sound | Place a sound effect at every cut and balance the music by hand | Sound effects play at every transition or the intro; music loops under the video at your volume |
| The finale | Keyframe a zoom or punch on the final reveal | Toggle the bass-boost punch on your top pick |
| Vertical framing | Build a blurred background layer for clips that do not fill 9:16 | A blurred copy of the active clip fills the frame with one switch |
The more often you post, the bigger the gap gets. Once the template handles the structure, your time goes into the part only you can do: picking the clips and deciding the order. See the pricing page for current plans.
Building a ranking video is easy. Building one that holds people to the final reveal takes a little planning.
Each entry should feel like a step up from the one before. If your strongest clip plays first, nobody has a reason to stay.
A countdown title that hints at the top pick without naming it, like "The last one broke the internet", starts the curiosity loop in the first second.
Trim each entry to the moment that matters. A few seconds per clip keeps momentum high, which is why the quick lengths run 3, 5 and 8 seconds.
Clip titles have room for 60 characters, but shorter is better. Viewers should take in the title at a glance and go back to watching the clip.
Your top pick is the payoff for the whole video. If it feels flat, viewers remember that next time they see your list. Pick something surprising, impressive or genuinely funny.
End your post caption or a pinned comment with a question like "What would you put at number one?" Disagreement in the comments is the format working as intended.
Want captions on a talking clip? Add them with Auto Captions, then upload the captioned video as one of your clips.
Pick an idea, and GhostShorts turns it into a countdown video built to dominate the doomscroll.
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