Cut silences from video

Remove dead air, pauses, and gaps automatically. Tighten pacing with one request to the AI agent.

Automatically remove silence from your timeline. Perfect for tightening interviews, podcasts, and presentations.

What you need

  • Video with audio on the timeline
  • Speech with natural pauses
  • About 30 seconds for processing

Step 1: Ensure your footage is ready

  1. Open your project
  2. Check the main track has audio
  3. Play a section — confirm you can hear speech and pauses

Step 2: Open the Agent panel

  1. Click "Agent" in the top-right header
  2. The agent panel opens on the left

Step 3: Request silence removal

Type one of these phrases:

Simple:

"Cut silences"

With custom threshold:

"Cut silences longer than 0.5 seconds"

Specific:

"Remove dead air from the interview"

Tightening:

"Tighten pacing by cutting pauses"

Step 4: Wait for processing

The agent will:

  1. Scan main track audio — analyze waveform
  2. Detect silent sections — gaps below speech threshold
  3. Remove qualifying gaps — default: 0.3 seconds or longer
  4. Ripple timeline — shift content to close gaps

You'll see status: "Analyzing audio..." → "Removing silences..." → "Done"

Step 5: Review the result

  1. Play the preview — listen for unnatural cuts
  2. Scrub through — visually check the timeline is more compact
  3. Check speech flow — breaths should feel natural

Step 6: Adjust if needed

If too aggressive (cut breaths) or too conservative:

Increase threshold (aggressive cut)

Type:

"Cut silences with 0.5 second threshold"

Decrease threshold (gentler)

Type:

"Cut silences with 0.2 second threshold"

Retry

Press Cmd/Ctrl+Z to undo, then re-request with different threshold.

Threshold guide

| Threshold | Effect | Best for | |-----------|--------|----------| | 0.1s | Very aggressive | May clip breaths; use sparingly | | 0.3s | Default | Balanced; removes most dead air | | 0.5s | Conservative | Keeps natural pauses; removes long gaps | | 1.0s | Very conservative | Only removes long dead air |

What gets cut

Removed:

  • Silence between clips (gaps on timeline)
  • Long pauses mid-speech
  • Dead air at clip ends

Preserved:

  • All speech and audible content
  • Short breaths and natural pauses
  • Audio above speech threshold

Ripples:

  • Timeline shifts left (content moves earlier)
  • Overlays and audio tracks adjust automatically
  • Sync is maintained

Combining with other edits

Before captions:

  1. Cut silences — tightens timing
  2. Generate captions — timing auto-adjusts

After reframe:

  1. Reframe to vertical — set canvas
  2. Cut silences — remove pauses
  3. Extract highlights — select best moments

With template:

"Apply podcast template, then cut silences"

Tips

  • Run early — silence cuts change clip positions; do before precise caption timing
  • Review before finalizing — aggressive thresholds can clip natural breaths
  • Undo freely — every cut is undoable; tweak threshold and re-run
  • Combine with transcript — silence cut + filler removal = very tight edits

Troubleshooting

| Issue | Fix | |-------|-----| | Too many cuts | Increase threshold: "cut silences with 0.5s" | | Pauses still there | Decrease threshold: "cut silences with 0.2s" or run again | | Breath sounds gone | 0.3s+ threshold may be too aggressive; use 0.5s | | Audio sync off | Check if ripple mode is on; sometimes affects overlays |

See also

PreviousReframe video to 9:16NextExtract best moments from video
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