Zee5 launches Clips with Google Cloud to turn shows into short vertical videos

Zee5 has launched a short-video feed called Clips, developed alongside Google Cloud, that automatically carves moments out of full-length films and television series to help subscribers browse its catalogue.

The feature scans movies and episodes, isolates notable scenes, and reformats them into vertical videos designed for scrolling on mobile screens. Viewers watching a clip can tap straight through to the full title rather than having to search the library manually.

Rather than having editors cut previews by hand, the streaming service is using several Google Cloud artificial intelligence systems to automate the work across thousands of hours of programming. The workflow runs on Google's Gemini Pro foundation models, its Chirp multilingual speech model, speech-to-text tools, the Cloud Vision API, and custom deep-learning image processing software.

Streaming platforms have been experimenting with vertical video feeds to mimic the browsing habits popularised by social media apps, where users sample short snippets before committing to longer viewing sessions.

Tejkarran Singh Bajaj, business head for Zee5 India and AI and innovation, said the tool places compelling moments from the broadcaster's archive directly into a user's swipe feed, giving audiences a faster route into titles they might otherwise scroll past.

Pramod Prakash, chief technology officer at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, said the platform was designed around viewers who do not arrive looking for a specific title. By linking individual dialogue cues and scenes back to their parent programmes, the software attempts to turn an existing catalogue into an active discovery mechanism.

Zee5 said early user patterns indicate that viewers are clicking through from Clips into full-length content, though the broadcaster has not released exact numbers measuring engagement or conversion rates.

Amit Kumar, managing director of the digital natives business at Google Cloud India, said the deployment illustrates how large language models can handle high-volume catalogue processing while shortening the time needed to build and release consumer features.

Zee5 operates as the digital streaming unit of Zee Entertainment Enterprises. Its streaming catalogue spans drama, films, children's programming, animation, and live sports across regional Indian languages, including Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, and Malayalam.