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Show HN: Edit videos faster by automatically removing silences

kapwing.com

71–80 of 94 posts

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

#71

Honestly the constant jump cut style of editing feels so unnatural to me... I'd rather watch someone takes pauses and not be taken out of the moment.... I'm sure this has applications particularly in advertising/marketing but it's not without outs issues.

Most people can read 5-10x faster than they can speak. Videos are very difficult to skim compared to text. If your video is trying to inform people, and there is no emotional content that's lost by cutting, then you're playing a losing game time-wise against just publishing text. People get bored pretty quickly, so people use jump cutting on YouTube to increase information bandwidth from the default that's frankly unacceptably slow to many viewers. None of it actually ends up fast enough for me, it is rare that I will suffer through a YouTube video that I could read about instead. In order to beat reading, IMO you need to use the visual bandwidth too, like 3Blue1Brown does. A talking head YouTube video is the worst of all worlds, but that's where people's audiences are, so they're just trying to make it bearable.

Cutting also removes ums and ahs. Newsreaders take ages to get good at this at speed, so giving people these tools makes video more accessible as a publishing medium.

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

#72
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.

Can somebody do a comparison this vs recut vs timebolt please?

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

#73
This is basically an attention killing machine and I'm not talking about the method, the method is OK and not novel. I have found that these time cuts completely ruin my ability to concentrate and after it happens 2-3 times in a short period, I lose interest in the video because it is so annoying.

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

#75
post #43
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Or you have multiple camera angles and you switch between them to hide the cuts. Like they've done in movies forever. Not exactly. Most movies use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-camera_setup , so even though there might be cuts to different camera angles, each angle actually comes from different takes. The goal of different angles isn't really to cut out pauses/fillers, it's for stylistic/cinematography reason…

> it's for stylistic/cinematography reasons.

Yes. One classic example is in a scene with two people speaking, you have two different camera angles to switch focus between them.

More generally, film makers who want to focus / depth-of-field effects very often do so with two cameras / takes where the focus is already set. Changing focus in the middle of a shot is very jarring.

Incidentally, this is something that became immediately obvious to me when I started to use my DSLR for video.

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

#76
post #73

This is basically an attention killing machine and I'm not talking about the method, the method is OK and not novel. I have found that these time cuts completely ruin my ability to concentrate and after it happens 2-3 times in a short period, I lose interest in the video because it is so annoying.

Agreed. I find it extremely hard to watch videos where the sense of flow is completely disrupted by these cuts. It seems to be the norm though so I guess we're in the minority.

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

#77
post #73

This is basically an attention killing machine and I'm not talking about the method, the method is OK and not novel. I have found that these time cuts completely ruin my ability to concentrate and after it happens 2-3 times in a short period, I lose interest in the video because it is so annoying.

Agreed. I find it extremely hard to watch videos where the sense of flow is completely disrupted by these cuts. It seems to be the norm though so I guess we're in the minority.

+1, perhaps a sizeable minority? It's probably a generational thing.

Personally I'd recommend writing a script and rehearsing it, instead of going on the fly and having to edit out the umhs, aahs and awkward silences. This might also raise the standard for excitement above the generic "super stoked".

Having said that, I think there's probably a market for this. Good luck to OP!

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

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Try also a fade-out-in of .25+.25 secs (or less) and I guess most of the annoyance will be gone (or make it customizable).

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

#79
The tool seems useful, but listening to the edited audio gives a suffocating feeling, because the speaker makes no pauses to breathe. Absolutely terrible sensation, exactly like I had earlier with commercial news radio stations that were packed with advertizing and announces.

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

#80
post #73

This is basically an attention killing machine and I'm not talking about the method, the method is OK and not novel. I have found that these time cuts completely ruin my ability to concentrate and after it happens 2-3 times in a short period, I lose interest in the video because it is so annoying.

In contrast I speed videos up because of the silences or slow talking. It removes my concentration otherwise. Call it an attention disorder.

I will agree that those cuts in body movement seem odd if anything when silences are removed. Maybe put a cat picture in the middle.

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