Startup Tools Tutorial Series #2: Riverside

The Startup Networks uses Riverside on a daily basis. We use it to record class courses for the community but also to create clips for our social media.

It has been years that we’ve been using it. Here is our honest review: 

Super Convenient User Interface 

Subtitles are written using AI that recognizes words. You can easily adjust the words and how it looks directly on the video. Riverside.fm’s automatic subtitles make your content more accessible, shareable, and professional—without any extra effort. As soon as you finish recording a podcast, interview, or video, the platform generates subtitles using smart AI, so your audience can follow along even if they’re watching with the sound off. This is especially helpful for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or just scrolling through social media on mute (which, let’s be honest, is most of us). Captions also help keep people engaged longer and make it easier for new listeners to find your content online. What’s great is that you can easily go in and edit the subtitles if you want to fix a word or tweak the timing. Riverside lets you download them in different file types like .SRT or .TXT, so you can use them wherever you publish your content. You can even repurpose the transcript for blog posts, social media quotes, or newsletters. In short, if you’re looking to grow your audience, look more polished, and save time doing it, Riverside’s subtitle feature is a huge help. It’s one of those behind-the-scenes tools that quietly makes your content a lot more powerful.

Add music, clips, background images etc. 

You can easily adjust the duration of each clips and can easily add your pictures using the “Upload’ button on the right. 

Smart Suggestions:

When creating a magic clip for example, you would want a lot of B-Rolls right? With Smart Suggestions, you can just highlight the word that the speaker of the video is speaking. And click on “Images” or “Videos” to get royalty free content that is linked to the highlighted word. For instance here, highlighting the word “Research,” the AI suggests to me pictures of syringes, high tech machines etc.

Magic Clips - Turning Long Recordings into Instant Social Content

Did you know? Just like OpusClip, Riverside.fm has Magic Clips?

What Are Magic Clips?

Magic Clips is an AI-powered feature built into Riverside.fm that automatically identifies the most compelling moments from your recording—key quotes, engaging reactions, insightful comments, or memorable moments—and converts them into short, media-optimized video clips with just one click.

These clips are:

• Professionally formatted (9:16 for vertical platforms)
   

• Automatically captioned
   

• Download-ready for social media
   

So instead of spending hours manually reviewing your footage, editing clips, adding captions, and resizing for different platforms, Riverside does 90% of the work for you—in seconds.

How Does It Work?

After you record your podcast, interview, webinar, or video session on Riverside.fm, you’ll find an option to “Generate Magic Clips.” The platform’s AI scans your full session to detect segments with:

• Strong engagement potential

• Clear insights or high-impact soundbites

• Defined speaker transitions or reactions

Once generated, the clips are automatically timestamped, trimmed, and subtitled. You can preview each clip, make quick edits, and download them for use across your social platforms.

This feature is a game-changer for creators who want to grow their audience but don’t have the time, budget, or editing expertise to do so manually.

Why Magic Clips Matter
 

1. Perfect for Social Algorithms
   Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts thrive on short, punchy content. These platforms are built to reward frequent, engaging clips, and Magic Clips give you that on autopilot.

2. Boost Discovery and Engagement
   Short clips with captions are easier to consume and share. They allow people to sample your content before committing to the full version

3. Save Time Without Sacrificing Quality
   Even if you’re a seasoned editor, scanning your footage for golden moments is tedious. Magic Clips reduces hours of work to minutes
    

Use Cases for Magic Clips

• Podcasters sharing teaser quotes or guest highlights

• Coaches and educators turning sessions into learning nuggets

• Startups and businesses creating promo material from webinars

• Interview shows highlighting powerful soundbites

• Social media marketers scaling content output efficiently

Cons: The AI is not able to generate and edit videos automatically for your magic clips - You must do that manually.

Podcast & Livestream

You can host a podcast online, it works just like a zoom meeting, just send the invite link and you can record everything on the website. 

Riverside.fm makes inviting interviewees seamless. You can send a simple invite link, and your guest joins the recording session without any hassle. This feature makes it a perfect choice for interview-style podcasts. You can directly broadcast your livestream to social platforms. 

Final Thoughts

As of 2025, we believe that riverside is the best video editing tool for startups, SMEs and side hustlers. No other tool allows us to seamlessly edit your content on just one platform and make it as seamless. The user experience and interface is just insane. We, at the Startup Networks, choose Riverside as our go-to tool for video editing. And we consider it as one of the best tool right now. 

Check out our tutorial for GAMMA: https://www.startupnetworks.co.uk/topic/582-startup-tools-tutorial-series-1-gamma-ai-powered-tool-for-presentations/?_rid=3906