How to remove silences
from a video
Why remove silences from a video
A pause that felt natural when you filmed reads as dead air on screen. The same goes for the "um" before a sentence and the line you said twice. Each one is short. Together they make a talk feel slow, and viewers notice. Taking them out is usually the first pass on any video of someone speaking. It is also the most repetitive one.
How to remove silences in Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or CapCut
The classic way is by hand. You play the footage, find each pause on the waveform, cut before and after it, and close the gap. On a ten minute talk that is hundreds of cuts.
Recent versions of Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve can read a transcript of the footage, and you can find and delete pauses from it. CapCut offers a similar option. These save time, but you still listen back to every cut, because a cut placed on a breath or half a word sounds wrong.
How to remove filler words and retakes
Filler words are the "um", "uh" and "like" that fill a pause while you think. A retake is a line you started, stopped and said again. Both are easy to spot in a transcript and slow to fix by hand: you find the word, cut around it, then check that the sentence still flows. For retakes you also have to choose which version to keep.
Removing silences with Montage
Drop the footage and say what you want: "cut the silences, the ums and the retakes". Montage does it in one pass:
- Silences. Every pause between two words longer than a set length goes. By default that is 0.7 seconds, and you can ask for a tighter or a looser cut.
- Filler words. The words marked as fillers in the transcript are taken out.
- Retakes. A word cut off and the words said again right after it are taken out, so the line you finished stays.
A short breath stays next to each word, so nothing starts or ends on a clipped syllable. At each cut the picture cuts and the sound fades across, so the joins are not heard.
Nothing is lost
Nothing is hidden. Nothing is deleted from your footage: every cut can come back. If a cut goes too far, say so: "keep the pause after the joke", or press Undo. You can also swap a take: "use my second take of the intro".
Tips for a clean cut that still sounds natural
- Keep some pauses. A pause after a question or before a key point helps the viewer. Ask for them to stay.
- Cut tighter for short videos. Vertical videos for Shorts, Reels and TikTok usually work with fewer pauses than a long talk.
- Clean first, then add the rest. Captions, B-roll and titles follow the words, so cut the silences before you add them.
- Listen once at the end. The cuts are placed between words, but your ear is the last check.