Once your video has captions, you can edit it like a document. Delete a sentence in the transcript and that part of the video is cut. This is the fastest way to tighten a talking-head video.
Open the transcript
- Generate captions first. See Make captions.
- Open the Captions tool, Captions tab.
- Switch from Lines to Transcript.
The whole speech shows as flowing text. Click any word to jump the playhead there.
Cut words
- Select words: drag across them, or click the first word and Shift-click the last. On a touch screen, tap the first word and then tap the last.
- Press Delete, or click Cut.
The video between those words is removed, with a little room kept in the silence around them so the cut sounds natural. The audio follows the cut. If a selection would remove the whole video, capshak stops you.
Cut long pauses
Long silences show in the transcript as small pills. Click a pill (Cut this pause) to remove that pause.
To remove every long pause at once, use Remove pauses in the Edit tool. Set Cut pauses longer than and Keep around words, then click Remove pauses.
Remove filler words
Filler words such as “um” and “uh” are underlined in the transcript. Click Remove fillers to cut them all in one go. You will see how many were cut, or No filler words to cut.
Restore cut words
Captions keep every word, even after a cut. Cut words show struck through in the transcript.
- Select the struck-through words.
- Click Restore.
The footage comes back in place. You can also press Undo to reverse the last change.
How it fits with the timeline
- Transcript cuts are normal cuts on the Video track. You can trim or move them later on the timeline.
- Cut words are hidden from the captions in the preview and in the export.
- Inserted videos don’t have captions, so they don’t appear in the transcript.
Tips
- Proofread first, so you can read the transcript easily. See Proofread captions with AI.
- Play across a cut once to check how it sounds.
- The AI editor can also tighten a video for you, for example “remove the filler words and long pauses”. See The AI editor.
- More on clips and tracks: Timeline basics.