Cut dead air and tighten the pace of a short video

Dead air is any stretch where nothing moves the video forward. It is the breath before the first word, the pause between takes, the long look at the camera before the point. Cutting it is the quickest way to make a short video feel faster, and the whole job needs two tools, Split and Delete.

Find the gaps

You can find pauses by watching, and you can find them by reading. For the second route, open the Subtitles tab and click Generate subtitles. Transcription runs on a hosted service and spends credits from your account.

Once captions exist, the Content tab lays the speech out as text with a timestamp chip on each line. Where the speaker stops for longer than half a second, a small chip such as "· 1.2s ·" shows how long the pause lasts. Click a timestamp to jump the playhead there.

Cut a gap out

1. Move the playhead to the start of the pause and press S.
2. Move to the end of the pause and press S again.
3. Click the piece between the two cuts and press Delete.

With the pointer over the timeline, S cuts at the thin line under the pointer. With the pointer elsewhere it cuts at the playhead. The scissors button in the timeline toolbar does the same.

When the main track is your only video track, the delete closes the hole: later clips, titles, captions and the soundtrack slide left together. With extra video tracks the gap stays. Right-click the empty space on that row and choose Remove empty space, and only that row's later items move.

To trim the front or back of a take, use Split and drop the left side or Split and drop the right side from the same toolbar. If a cut lands badly, press Ctrl+Z or ⌘Z and try again.

Keep a beat

Leave some pauses in. A short breath between sentences and a slightly longer one between ideas gives the listener time to follow, and speech cut back to back sounds rushed. After each cut, play the joint from a second before it. If a word is clipped, undo and cut a little further into the silence. Cut where the pause is deepest, with a sliver of air left on each side.

Speed up what is slow

Silent stretches such as setup shots, b-roll and slow walks can play faster. Select the clip and open the Speed tab in the right panel. Speed changes the whole clip. Speed curve changes it over time, and the presets Montage, Hero, Bullet, Flash in and Flash out give you starting shapes to adjust. Click the graph to add a point and double-click a point to remove it.

Ask the assistant to find silences

Press Ctrl+J or ⌘J to open the assistant. It has a tool that detects silent stretches, so you can ask it to list the quiet parts of a clip and where each starts and ends. Then make the cuts yourself or ask it to. Assistant turns on DepCut's hosted models, such as Gemini Flash, spend credits.

Your turn

Open DepCut, add a talking video, and cut the three longest pauses. Play it back once with the sound on.