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Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

Excellent guide, thanks!

Shameless plug: a while ago I wrote a simple Python script to remove silent parts from video using ffmpeg, which AFAIK it doesn't do out of the box:

https://github.com/bambax/Remsi

It might be helpful to others.

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Late 2020 I had the same thought, I was making screencasts and hated doing all the cutting to turn my 45 minutes of mistakes into a 3 minute video. So I made a similar script in Node, where it used ffmpeg’s silencedetect and instead of outputting a new video, it saved an EDL file that I could import into an editor like DaVinci Resolve, and then I could fine tune the edits.

As soon as that worked I wanted more - mostly just really wanted the process to be interactive and real-time, instead of the run-check-tweak-repeat cycle of using a script.

So I ended up down the rabbit hole of building a video editor instead of making screencasts, and now Recut exists (https://getrecut.com).

It’s basically an interactive silence remover. I still haven’t finished those screencasts but now I have an editor haha. While it’s pretty basic, it’s saving folks a bunch of time, and there’s lots more cool stuff I want to add between automations and basic manual editing features.

This is super-amazing and removes the main excuses why I've been reluctant to do any kind of video-casting. Thanks for sharing!

1. Recut looks awesome, and 2. "I still haven’t finished those screencasts but now I have an editor" amazing :D

Well done sir!

Your're a hacker role model.

See also: https://github.com/WyattBlue/auto-editor (automatically edit video and audio by analyzing a variety of methods, most notably audio loudness)

In my experience that approach will produce out of sync audio and video for long videos. Audio frames != video frames, so the cuts must be aligned to the video frames timestamps.

I get the concept, but can you possibly elaborate on the why? Is this to save time watching movies?

I hate the type of ‘instructional videos’ that have (likely programmatically) edited all and any short pause in the audio making the video appear as a 30+min continuous speak.

I mostly interpret this as ‘see me see me - I’m good!’ in stead of ‘let me try to educate you about this subject’.

All the natural pauses between sentences gives a much better and natural flow.

This also includes ‘oups I made a mistake .. and fixed it like this…’

Just like the line breaks in this comment serves a purpose;-)

One great example of a really good tutorial is Eivind Fonn’s Spacemacs ABC videos: https://youtu.be/2y9NLIbNf_I

Here’s my worst example of how not to teach: https://youtu.be/qtIqKaDlqXo

This series is also bad as there is way too much zoom in and out (which distract all but the presenter!)

https://youtu.be/qtIqKaDlqXo

I completely disagree. When I'm trying to learn something, I'd much rather sit through a short, efficient video than a 1 hour unedited video of someone including mistakes and rambling. Hell I generally don't even have the patience for videos in the first place and default to searching for text first unless I'm specifically looking for audio. But to each their own.

I hear you, but there's a middle ground I think.

A bunch of non-breaking quick cuts is of course jarring and could be better, but what you describe with "mistakes and all" is too far down the other end in my mind. I would not want to sit through someone having to backpedal like that.

But to each their own, we all learn differently.

Well, no, although a digest-maker for feature films would be an interesting concept!

It's for videos you make yourself, to remove silent parts automatically. In interviews for example, it's useful to simply remove silences.

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