n8n Workflow: Clip Short Videos from Transcripts (Google Drive + OpenAI)

Turn Google Drive transcripts into ready-to-render short video clips—automatically

This n8n workflow monitors a Google Drive folder for new transcript JSON files, asks OpenAI to find the best standalone short-clip time ranges with hooks and captions, runs a strict quality gate, and then calls your render (and optional publish) HTTP endpoints—logging every result to n8n Data Tables.

What this workflow does

• Detects new transcript files in Google Drive and triggers immediately when a file is added to your selected folder.
• Downloads and parses transcript JSON that includes word-level timestamps. Invalid/unparsable files are recorded in a dead-letter Data Table.
• Uses OpenAI (Chat) to generate a structured list of candidate clips (start/end times, hook, caption, and a standalone score).
• Splits candidates into individual clips, then skips any clip whose start time is already stored for the same source video in an n8n Data Table (prevents duplicates).
• Applies a quality gate per clip, enforcing duration bounds, non-empty/non-truncated text, banned phrases/placeholders, clean word-boundary start, and a minimum standalone score. Failures go to a review queue table with reasons.
• Calls your render endpoint for passing clips and validates the response includes a usable asset URL, file size, and duration before saving to a drafts queue table.
• Optionally publishes by calling your publish HTTP endpoint when automatic publishing is enabled.
• Logs a per-run summary (including zero-candidate runs and reason tallies) to an n8n Data Table.

Use cases

• Repurpose long-form video transcripts from Google Drive into short clips for social publishing.
• Maintain a review and drafts queue for content teams using automated quality checks.
• Automate “clip selection → render → (optional) publish” for SaaS operators managing high-volume video workflows.

Technical details

• Integrations/inputs: Google Drive (new file trigger, download), OpenAI (Chat).
• Core workflow logic: if, set, code, split out, aggregate, data table.
• External outputs: HTTP render endpoint (validated asset URL/file size/duration) and optional HTTP publish endpoint.

Category: n8n automation workflow