How to make top 5 videos that people watch to number 1.

The short answer

To make a top 5 video, choose a topic with a clear best and worst, collect one clip for each entry, upload the clips to a top 5 video maker, drag them into order from number 5 down to number 1, type a title and a short label for every entry, add a voiceover, music and captions, then export in 9:16 for TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts.

You can build the same thing in any video editor by stacking text, a blurred background and the clips by hand, which takes an hour or two per video. A top 5 video maker like Clippie builds the list, the numbers, the transitions and the captions for you, so the time goes into choosing good clips and a good order instead.

What a top 5 video looks like

The format is consistent across TikTok, Reels and Shorts, which is part of why it works: people know what they are getting in the first second. A typical top 5 video has:

• A title at the top: in a bold display font, naming the list: “Top 5 fastest cars ever made”.
• A numbered list: from 1 to 5 under the title. Entries fill in as the countdown reaches them, or show as faded placeholders so people can see how many are left.
• A clip window: in the lower half, with a blurred copy of the clip behind it filling the frame.
• A hit between entries: a bass drop, a sound effect or a voice saying “number 4”, often with a black frame, so each entry lands.
• A voiceover and captions: the title read aloud at the start, and captions for anyone watching on mute.

The countdown runs from number 5 to number 1. That order is the whole trick: every entry promises a better one, and most people stay to see what you put first.

Step 1: pick a topic people will argue about

A top 5 works when the entries can be compared on one scale and viewers have their own opinion. “Top 5 goals of the season” works; “Top 5 things in my room” does not. Three checks before you start:

• One scale: fastest, biggest, scariest, funniest, most expensive. If you cannot say what number 1 beats the others at, the list has no order.
• A debatable number 1: the comments come from people who would have ranked it differently. A list everyone agrees with gets watched once and forgotten.
• Clips you can get: every entry needs a clip. Pick topics you can film, record, generate or license, not ones that only exist in other people’s videos.

Stuck for a topic? The top 5 video ideas page has 100 of them, grouped by niche.

Step 2: collect one clip per entry

Four to seven seconds per clip is enough. Longer clips drag; shorter ones feel like a slideshow. Trim each clip to the moment that proves the entry belongs on the list: the goal going in, the jump landing, the reveal. Where the clips come from matters as much as how good they are:

• Your own footage: phone recordings, drone shots, product shots. Always safe to use and the easiest to rank honestly.
• Screen recordings: your own gameplay, your own app, your own designs. Record at the device’s native vertical resolution if you can.
• AI-generated clips: generate a clip per entry in Clippie’s AI Studio, or make a narrated version in the AI story editor with an image or animated scene per entry. No footage to license.
• Stock and Creative Commons: footage whose licence allows reuse in your own videos. Check the licence, not just the download button.
• Not other creators’ videos: reposting clips from other channels, with or without credit, is the fastest way to lose a ranking video to a copyright claim or a reused-content strike.

Step 3: rank the clips from 5 to 1

Put the weakest entry at number 5 and the strongest at number 1, so the video keeps getting better. Two refinements: if two entries are close, put the more surprising one later, and if one entry is the obvious winner, consider leaving it at number 2 and putting a defensible surprise at number 1. The second version gets more comments.

In Clippie you upload in any order and drag the clips into place; the numbers update as you go.

Step 4: write the title and the labels

The title names the list and is the hook: “Top 5 scariest places on Earth”, not “Scary places”. Say the number, say the scale, say the subject. The labels are the two to four words next to each number: “Snake Island 🐍”, “Aokigahara forest”. They are read in a glance while the clip plays, so keep them short and in the same style for every entry.

Use a heavy display font (Komika Axis, Anton, Bangers and Bebas Neue are the usual choices) and give number 1 a different colour from the rest so it reads as the winner.

Step 5: add a voiceover and transitions

The classic top 5 videos use a text-to-speech narrator reading the title and announcing each number, and that is still the sound people expect from the format. In Clippie you pick a voice, generate the title voiceover, and optionally add a transition voiceover before any clip: the video freezes on the clip’s first frame while the voice says “number 3, the diner dance”, then plays.

Between clips, turn on the bass boost transition for a one-second black frame with a bass drop, or add a sound effect to an entry. One of these per entry is enough; the format should feel punchy, not noisy.

Step 6: music and captions

Add one track under the whole video from the music library or your own file, and set its volume so the voiceover sits on top. Mute clips whose own audio does not add anything, and keep it on for the ones where the sound is the point.

Generate captions from the voiceovers so the title and the announcements are readable on mute, and style them to match the labels. Most short-form video is watched without sound at first, and a top 5 with no captions loses the people who never turn it on.

Step 7: export and post

Export in 1080x1920. Post it with the title as the caption and a question that invites a different ranking: “What should have been number 1?”. Replies to comments count as engagement too, so answer the first few.

If you plan to post top 5 videos regularly, save the finished video as a template. The fonts, colours, music, voice and the label and animation for every position are kept, so the next video is only new clips.

Making a top 5 video by hand

If you would rather build it in a video editor, the structure is the same; you just place every element yourself. In CapCut, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or Final Cut:

1. Start a 1080x1920 project and import your five clips, trimmed to 4 to 7 seconds each.
2. Duplicate each clip onto a lower track, scale it to fill the frame and blur it heavily. This is the background.
3. Scale the original clip to about 80% width and sit it in the lower half of the frame with rounded corners.
4. Add a title text layer at the top and five text layers for the numbered list, with the labels hidden until their clip starts.
5. Add a one-second black clip with a bass sound effect between entries, and a text-to-speech or recorded voiceover for the title.
6. Add a music track, generate or type captions, and export as MP4.

Expect an hour or two for the first one, and 30 to 45 minutes once you have saved a project to copy. Clippie does the same layout in a few minutes; the trade-off is less freedom over where things go.

Mistakes that make top 5 videos flop

The videos that stall tend to make the same errors:

• Clips that run too long: seven seconds is the ceiling for most entries. Trim to the moment.
• A list nobody can disagree with: if the order is obvious, there is nothing to comment on.
• Labels you cannot read: thin fonts, long labels, low contrast. Heavy font, short words, white on blur.
• No transitions: without a hit between entries the countdown turns into a slideshow.
• Other people’s footage: it gets claimed, and the video and the channel pay for it.
• A slow start: the title should be on screen and spoken in the first second. No intro, no logo.