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Show HN: Edit videos faster by automatically removing silences

kapwing.com

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Re: Show HN: Edit videos faster by automatically removing silences

#21

Post by xhkkffbf »

Jedd wrote: post #16

I watched the demonstration videos on the landing page, and the effect wasn't as bad as I often see on some youtube videos, but I think that's because the subject was sitting at a desk, rather than standing, moving around much more. Anecdata - heavily jump-cut edits on youtube instantly inspire me to find an alternative source of the same information, as the breathless, rapid-fire, jerky-video, sensation is irksome.…

It would be neat if the application doesn't make a hard cut, but merely speeds up the silent parts.

A more complex algorithm might watch movement and tune the amount of speed up so the visual doesn't get jumpy.

Re: Show HN: Edit videos faster by automatically removing silences

#22

Post by unfocussed_mike »

shahahmed wrote: post #14
unfocussed_mike wrote: post #8

Somewhere in the afterlife, Harold Pinter is cursing.

i think pinter pauses will always be a thing! it's up to the creator to decide what they're going for, certainly punchy dialogue and jump cuts have their place + i think with this UX we have, you can decide which pauses you want to keep

Oh definitely. I was just making a funny ;-)

Re: Show HN: Edit videos faster by automatically removing silences

#23

Post by shahahmed »

lasean wrote: post #19

I get the use case. Not sure there's enough value here as a cloud-based SaaS product. I use a similar product called Recut ( https://getrecut.com/ ). $99 one-time fee (no subscription). Easy to open the edited project in NLEs. macOS only. Unclear that Kapwing is a better option when Recut would be breakeven at seven months and you can don't need to round trip videos in the cloud.

That's a fair criticism - for certain users, I do think ramping up on a native NLE (which can be flat rate or SaaS) and the using a plugin/external tool like Timebolt or Recut is a lot. To some exporting on 64 core machines that's not your local machine (heating it up) + having access on any browser is attractive, but obviously there are tradeoffs.

Re: Show HN: Edit videos faster by automatically removing silences

#24

Post by pmoriarty »

itake wrote: post #5

Instead of cutting out the silence spots, why not speed them up? If the presenter is silent b/c they are drawing something on the board (like in a lecture), then the result will feel a choppy.

In many cases, speeding up the entire video is even better.

I've been watching a lot of educational videos and lectures on 2x or even 3x speed, thereby saving a ton of time.

Of course, when the entire video is watched at 2x speed, the pauses can comfortably be shown at 5x speed or even faster.

Re: Show HN: Edit videos faster by automatically removing silences

#25

Post by shahahmed »

vlunkr wrote: post #20
shahahmed wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a gradient -- one extreme is that you have a recording with multiple takes and several long pauses as you're reading a script, in which case you want to streamline the clean up process. But I think it's a creative decision to make the cuts extremely tight and jumpy, not for everyone!

Or you have multiple camera angles and you switch between them to hide the cuts. Like they've done in movies forever. People started doing jump cuts in youtube videos and for some reason we're stuck with it.

for some that's viable - either have multiple cameras or record with reset and record with different angles, but that's a lot of overhead for certain situations. has it's place for certain projects i think

Re: Show HN: Edit videos faster by automatically removing silences

#26

Post by shahahmed »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #21
Jedd wrote: post #16

I watched the demonstration videos on the landing page, and the effect wasn't as bad as I often see on some youtube videos, but I think that's because the subject was sitting at a desk, rather than standing, moving around much more. Anecdata - heavily jump-cut edits on youtube instantly inspire me to find an alternative source of the same information, as the breathless, rapid-fire, jerky-video, sensation is irksome.…

It would be neat if the application doesn't make a hard cut, but merely speeds up the silent parts. A more complex algorithm might watch movement and tune the amount of speed up so the visual doesn't get jumpy.

I like this idea - more sophisticated, and maybe a future version. Thank you!

Re: Show HN: Edit videos faster by automatically removing silences

#27

Post by dceddia »

lasean wrote: post #19

I get the use case. Not sure there's enough value here as a cloud-based SaaS product. I use a similar product called Recut ( https://getrecut.com/ ). $99 one-time fee (no subscription). Easy to open the edited project in NLEs. macOS only. Unclear that Kapwing is a better option when Recut would be breakeven at seven months and you can don't need to round trip videos in the cloud.

Oh hey, I made that! Glad to hear you’re getting good use out of it :)

It’s Mac-only right now but I’m currently working on a Windows version.

I’m a big fan of one-time licenses and the Sketch-style “1 year of updates but use it forever if you want” kind of thing too, and Recut will probably switch to that at some point to make this whole thing more sustainable. What’s interesting is I’ve noticed that not everyone feels this way - some people genuinely would rather pay a smaller fee, but monthly. The thought has crossed my mind to offer both.

I do think there’s a large chunk of the market who don’t use NLEs and would rather avoid them (especially in the mobile crowd) and something web-based like Kapwing is probably preferable for those folks.

Re: Show HN: Edit videos faster by automatically removing silences

#28

Post by ricklamers »

On the about page you mentioned that you raised instead of continuing on the bootstrapped path. What made you pull the trigger?

My first impression when I checked out the landing page and product was: this is a perfect bootstrapped SaaS product idea to grow to meaningful ARR with a small team of 2-3 + some hired help for things like customer support.

Re: Show HN: Edit videos faster by automatically removing silences

#29

Post by jenthoven »

ricklamers wrote: post #28

On the about page you mentioned that you raised instead of continuing on the bootstrapped path. What made you pull the trigger? My first impression when I checked out the landing page and product was: this is a perfect bootstrapped SaaS product idea to grow to meaningful ARR with a small team of 2-3 + some hired help for things like customer support.

[This is Julia, the cofounder/CEO] We bootstrapped for 8 months and grew to about 100k of MRR before raising money. I wrote a blog post about this decision https://www.kapwing.com/blog/why-we-decided-to-raise-money-f....

tl;dr is that 1) It's a competitive domain, so we felt we needed to grow our team quickly to stay relevant 2) There's a lot of technical challenges with video editing in the browser + cloud, so we needed to be able to hire talented engineers to scale and 3) I believe there's a huge business in empowering creative teams, so we think we can get to venture scale and needed the capital to support that.

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