Tidy pauses

Where it is

Sound tab › Tidy pauses… (for a voice track) · Edit › Tidy Pauses… (Shift+Alt+T)

What you can do

• Look in the selection, this track, or every voice track. With several voice tracks, a pause is only where all of them are quiet.
• Quieter than, For at least and Leave each side say what counts as a pause. Auto sets the quiet level from the background noise; Keep breaths shortens around a breath instead of cutting it.
• Find pauses shades them on the waveform: amber where they'll change, faint where they're already short. Click one to keep it as it is.
• Then: Shorten each to a length, Remove (leaving a little air), Mark them with markers or ranges, or Split the speech into clips.
• Choose whether the other tracks move with the voices. Music never moves. Smooth each join fades the cuts.
• The change is one Undo step; the card shows the length before and after. The Shorten pauses recipe step does the same thing.

In this film

1. 0:03A talk with long pausesThe flat stretches between sentences
2. 0:05Sound › Tidy pauses…For a voice track · Edit › Tidy Pauses… (Shift+Alt+T)
3. 0:08Find pausesAuto sets the quiet level from the background noise
4. 0:12Shaded on the waveformAmber will change · faint is already short · click one to keep it
5. 0:15ShortenEach long pause becomes this long · or Remove, Mark, Split
6. 0:20Shorter, in one Undo stepThe card shows the length before and after
7. 0:22Same words, shorter gaps
8. 0:25In a recipe tooThe Shorten pauses step does the same in any recipe