Shorten a pause

The Transcript tab marks each long pause in the speech. Click one and delete it to tighten the pause without taking any words, as one undo step.

Menu: Edit ▸ DeleteEdit ▸ Ripple Delete
Keys: ⌫⌦⌘⌫
Where: Inspector ▸ Transcript
Needs: Words in the Transcript tab, and the voice model, which runs on your Mac with no key and no upload.
Agent tools: get_timeline_transcriptripple_delete_rangesset_range

Pauses in the transcript

Where the speech stops for more than a second between two words of one clip, the transcript shows the pause’s length in grey after the word before it, such as [2.4 s].

The length is what the voice model hears as silence between that word and the next. The model is the one Remove Silences uses. It runs when the project opens the file, so a file’s pauses appear once it has finished. They appear for words from an AssemblyAI transcript as well as words read on this Mac.

That second is measured as the clip plays on the timeline, so a clip’s speed changes what counts. A 0.8 s silence in a clip slowed to half speed plays for 1.6 s, and shows as a pause.

Select a pause

Click the pause. It’s selected on its own, the part that would go becomes the timeline’s in/out range, and the playhead moves to the start of that cut. To hear what would go, turn on Loop.

⎋ clears the selection and the range. Dragging, ⇧ and ⌘A select words only, so a pause is always selected by clicking it.

Delete the pause

Choose View ▸ Transcript (⌃⌘T) to open the Transcript tab.
Click the pause, the grey length in the text.
Press ⌫.

The pause is shortened, keeping 0.2 s at each end, and the gap closes on every unlocked track, as one undo step named Delete Pause. A [2.4 s] pause loses about 2 s and leaves about 0.4 s. The range clears and the playhead lands where the cut was.

⌦, ⌘⌫, Edit ▸ Delete and Edit ▸ Ripple Delete do the same, as long as the transcript text has the keyboard.

The cut lands on whole frames and never takes the start of a word.

The tab won’t cut a pause when a locked track has words inside the cut, or when the cut would pass the limit of 4,096 clips. It beeps and shows the same reason it gives for words, at the foot of the inspector.

When a pause isn’t shown

The tab shows a pause only when it can cut it cleanly. There’s no pause marked:

between two clips, including the two halves of a clip you’ve split
when either word next to it is faint: inside a nest, under a transition or on a locked track
when a word on another track, one the tab shows, reaches into the part that would go, because the cut would take that word
when a clip whose words haven’t been read yet starts inside the cut
when keeping 0.2 s at each end would leave nothing to cut

With an agent

get_timeline_transcript reads the same pauses, each with the range the tab would cut it by, and one ripple_delete_ranges call shortens one. set_range can shade that range first. An agent can pass several in that call, which makes them one undo step. See Cut words and pauses.