Smart Clipping

Open Smart Clipping Settings

On the timeline control bar, click Smart Clipping to open the Smart Clipping Settings panel.

Choose a content preset

Use the Speech / Music tabs in the top‑left of the panel to tell Smart Clipping what type of material you are working with.
The blue Speech preset is selected by default and works best for voice‑over and dialogue; switching to Music automatically uses a smoother, music‑friendly silence detection profile.

Parameter guide: how to tune the three sliders

This middle section is where Smart Clipping really does its job, and also where many people feel unsure on first use. You can think of the three sliders as answering three questions:

• What should count as "silence"?
• How long does silence need to be before it is worth trimming?
• After trimming, how much gap should remain?

In the Parameter Adjustment section, the three sliders work like this:

• Silence Threshold (sensitivity)
  You can think of this as a "passing line". Audio quieter than this threshold is treated as silence; audio louder than it is treated as content to keep. The default is around -30.0 dB.

  • If your environment is noisy and the analysis keeps too much background hum or keyboard clicks, drag the slider to the right so the system is stricter;
  • If you notice the tail ends of words or very soft speech getting cut, drag the slider to the left to make it more forgiving.

• Minimum Duration (shortest silence length)
  This defines "how long does a pause need to be before it counts as a pause". The default is 0.5s.
  With 0.5 seconds, typical 0.2‑second breathing pauses in normal speech are left untouched (so your rhythm stays natural). Only when you pause longer than 0.5 seconds will the system treat that section as removable silence.

• Keep Duration (buffer time)
  This controls how much silence to leave over after trimming. The default is 0.10s.
  If you set it to 0, your audio becomes very tight, almost like a "machine‑gun" delivery where one sentence ends and the next starts immediately. We generally recommend keeping 0.10–0.20s so there is a tiny gap between sentences and the speech feels natural.

Whenever you adjust a slider, Smart Clipping recalculates the silence list and the total time saved, so you can tweak settings and watch the numbers change.

Review the analysis and apply

1. In the Analysis Result card at the bottom, review the number of detected silence segments, the total time saved, and the reduction percentage.
2. In the Detailed Information list, inspect each silence segment with its start time, end time, and duration:
   • Check which pauses will be processed;
   • Read the orange label on the right to see how each segment will be handled — for example, Shorten to 0.10s means only 0.10 seconds of silence will remain.
     If you see pauses you want to keep, go back up, adjust the sliders, and click Re-analyze again.

3. Once you are happy with the result, click the blue Apply Smart Clipping button in the bottom‑right to apply the current settings to the clips on your timeline. If you only wanted to test the settings and don’t want to commit the changes yet, click Cancel to close the panel.

Check the result on the timeline

After applying the trim, you will see many new cuts added to the audio region on the timeline. Play it back once to make sure the pacing and pauses feel right.