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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

#31

Post by rzzzt »

powrtoch wrote: post #7

Whoa. For years I've been seeing YouTube videos that seem to just teleport choppily around what I assumed were silences. I always assumed there was a standard tool that everyone used to do this. I can do the equivalent thing to a podcast episode in like 5 seconds in Logic. The notion that people have been doing this by hand is staggering, but kudos to you for finally coming along and filling this niche.

It's not automatic, but there is this marker tool that uses an audio track to make note of important timestamps while you are recording: https://github.com/evankale/Blipper

The author also wrote supporting scripts for Vegas to extract scenes based on the position of the blips in the audio.

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

#32

Post by dceddia »

Very nice! As someone who wrote a native tool to do pretty much this (Recut / getrecut.com) it's super impressive to see it done in a web browser. The editor feels very fast and fluid.

Doing it natively was hard enough, and recently I've been rewriting Recut with Rust + Electron so I have an idea of how much work it was to get it working well :sweat-smile: Keep up the good work y'all!

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

#33

Post by greggman3 »

I don't know if any other apps do this but there are plenty of Japanese youtube channels that do this

This one in particular is the one where I was introduced to the style but it certainly wasn't the first to do this.

https://www.youtube.com/c/%E6%9C%89%E9%9A%A3%E5%A0%82%E3%81%...

To be clear, they aren't just cutting out silence, they are cutting them to the point that it's a style and the speech pattern, particularly of the Owl character, sounds unnatural, which I'm assuming is what they were going for. It's that style of nearly cutting phrases together faster than they would be naturally spoken is the thing I'm saying is a trend in some Japanese videos.

Note: The channel itself is run by a stationary store chain from Tokyo. The funny part is the Owl character often makes fun of what they're showing as in "why would anyone buy this?" or "That's way too expensive" which is funny for a channel run by a store selling most of things they're showing off.

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

#34

Post by lasean »

shahahmed wrote: post #23
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.

Fair point. That makes sense. May be an opportunity for better messaging for who the product is for. Good luck with the roll out. Others mentioned Descript (which is solid). There's a labs project from Adobe that's exploring the same space (https://labs.adobe.com/projects/shasta/). So lots of options. A more clear customer target is needed (zero experience, prosumer, post-production creative professional). Again, not knocking your product. Just feels like this may end up more of a feature than a product — the subscription angle will force you to add more value and better target the right audience.

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

#35

Post by lasean »

dceddia wrote: post #27
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 fe…

Agree on that last sentence. Thanks for making Recut!

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

#37

Post by shahahmed »

dceddia wrote: post #32

Very nice! As someone who wrote a native tool to do pretty much this (Recut / getrecut.com) it's super impressive to see it done in a web browser. The editor feels very fast and fluid. Doing it natively was hard enough, and recently I've been rewriting Recut with Rust + Electron so I have an idea of how much work it was to get it working well :sweat-smile: Keep up the good work y'all!

thanks for checking it out, Dave! I'm a big fan and learned react from your tutorials :)

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

#38

Post by Jedd »

shahahmed wrote: post #17
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.…

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!

Undeniably.

At the top end you've got people comfortable with one or more cameras, a clear message, good communication skills, a well honed script / presentation -- in those cases the information density is naturally going to be high, and any brief pauses are thoughtfully placed to allow the viewer to contemplate & digest. These types of videos are rare but excellent, per my taste.

As I noted, I'm definitely in the minority camp here --the desire that a poorly prepared video should have been a web page is probably generationally akin to the comparably curmudgeonly contemplation that rambling online meetings should have been an email.

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

#39

Post by dceddia »

shahahmed wrote: post #37
dceddia wrote: post #32

Very nice! As someone who wrote a native tool to do pretty much this (Recut / getrecut.com) it's super impressive to see it done in a web browser. The editor feels very fast and fluid. Doing it natively was hard enough, and recently I've been rewriting Recut with Rust + Electron so I have an idea of how much work it was to get it working well :sweat-smile: Keep up the good work y'all!

thanks for checking it out, Dave! I'm a big fan and learned react from your tutorials :)

Hey, glad to hear that! Kudos again on the editor, it's really well done.

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

#40

Post by itake »

pmoriarty wrote: post #24
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.

IMHO, the speed up should be user controlled. Not everyone's first language is English and can tolerate higher rates of communication.
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