How to make a sports highlight video on your iPhone with AI

Sports highlights are the second most common thing people open the Narrative iPhone app to make, and the hardest to make by hand: the good moments are seconds inside long clips, and finding them is most of the work. This is how a highlight reel gets made on the phone, from a camera roll full of game footage to a cut that lands on the hits, and what to say to get the version you want.

Pick the long clips, not the moments

Do not pre-trim. Pick the whole recordings from Photos, the ten-minute quarter and the three-minute warm-up included. The editor’s first job is to find the plays, and it is better at that with the whole clip than you are with a scrubber at 1 a.m. The footage stays in your library; the app sends the sound for a transcript, and when the editor wants to look at a stretch of the picture, the phone sends it that stretch and nothing else.

If you shot at 60 frames a second, say so or let it find out; a 60 fps source gives twice the real pictures in a slow-motion stretch, and the phone’s playback interpolates inside slow stretches so a hang on the apex moves instead of stepping.

How it finds the plays

A highlight reel is placed as a montage: the music, if there is music, decides the cut, and the moments decide what goes on the beats. To find the moments the editor reads the footage rather than guessing from thumbnails. It detects where the shots change. It finds people, faces and bodies in a stretch, and objects by name: a ball, a bat, a bike. It reads the transcript for a crowd reaction or a commentator, if there is one. Then it looks at frames at the candidate times before it cuts, and keeps the ones that read as a play.

Because the detection is a track and not a guess, it can also follow something. “Circle the ball on the goal” pins a ring to the ball’s measured position for the stretch it is in frame, and the ring stays on the ball whichever part of the clip is on screen. “Keep her in frame” on a 9:16 crop of a wide shot becomes a crop that follows her through the play.

What to say

The reel has four knobs, and the editor asks about the ones you did not set:

• Whose highlights. “Number 7 in blue.” “My son, the goalkeeper.” “Everyone, the best ten plays.” Without this it cuts the best plays of the game, not of a player.
• The length and the frame. “45 seconds, 9:16” for a post; “two minutes, 16:9” for the team group chat or a recruiting clip.
• The pace and the flash. This is the one it asks most. Hard cuts on the beat and nothing else; or speed ramps into the hits; or the full hype treatment, where the picture punches, shakes and flashes on every hit at a level from medium to insane. Say “clean” if you want the plays to speak for themselves.
• A reference, if you have one. Attach a reel whose pace and transitions you like and say “like this one”; it sets the rhythm and the editor does not ask about pacing.

Highlights of number 10 in white from the three clips, about 40 seconds, 9:16. Cut to the song I added. Speed ramp into the goals, hang on the shot, then snap out. Circle the ball on the second goal.

If you want music under it, add a track you have the rights to use and name it in the prompt. The cut lands on its beats and the plays’ own sound comes up under the slow stretches where it matters, the crowd rising into a hang, the strike of the ball.

The slow point goes on the hit

Slow motion is where sports edits go wrong, and the rule is simple: the slowest frame of a ramp is the contact, the apex or the look to camera, and it sits on the beat if there is music. Everything else is built out from it: full speed in, a fifth of a second to slow down, a hang of a third to two thirds of a second, then a snap back or a cut out while still slow. A freeze belongs on impact or a face, never on a blur. A rewind belongs on a clear reversal, a fall or a shot, and nowhere else. The speed ramps post has the numbers; on the phone you only need the words: “slow motion on the dunk, the apex on the beat.”

Then fix the moments it missed

No detector catches every play, and the one it missed is always the one you care about. Say where it is: “there is a save at about six minutes into the second clip, add it before the last goal.” Time references work in the clip’s own seconds or in the edit’s. If it picked a play you do not want, “cut the third play” removes it and closes the gap. Trim a hang shorter or longer by dragging its end on the timeline; the ramp stays on the clip. Every change, yours or the editor’s, is a version you can step back from.

Where the reel goes

Export renders on the phone for most reels, then Save to Photos or Share. For a post, 9:16 under a minute; for a coach or a recruiter, 16:9 and longer, with the plays in full rather than ramped. Make both from the same project: “now make a two-minute 16:9 version of this with no effects, plays in full” is one more prompt, and both versions stay in the history.

Get the app

Narrative is free to download on the App Store for iPhone, iOS 18 or later. Pick the game footage, say whose highlights, and the first cut starts a three-day free trial. On a computer the web editor cuts to music the same way.