Detect and delete silence
When working with separate tracks of several remote guests on a podcast or talk show it is essential to delete "silent" parts of the track when someone isn't talking. Sometimes these parts are not silent at all (because of a lot of background noise or leaking audio from headphones), but that makes it even more important to have them removed.
I would like Hindi to be able to identify and insert breakpoints around these sections automatically and remove them upon request. That would make my life soooo much easier.
Peter Dörrie
shared this idea
We have been looking at how we can implement “delete silence” in Hindenburg. I think we should be able to come up with a solution for that in the near future.
We have been working on some other features that touch the same area, with out latest Beta feature called “Magic Levels”.
It’s a non destructive way of applying Side Chain Gate – so that mixing multiple recordings become very easy.
No the same, I know – be it might help out in the situations where you are looking to reduce Bleed or Noisefloor.
20 comments
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Richard Gunther
commented
This is the definitive feature that prevents me from switching from Audacity (which I'd love to leave behind me). The trick on this is that is also needs to work with linked tracks, so that it's only deleting segments where it finds silence across all the linked tracks. Add this, and I'm in!
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Seth Johnson
commented
Magic Levels seems like a great addition but I feel that it misses the mark on the requested feature. Specifically when doing double ender recordings you will run into issues with audio drift. Even with the same recording settings differences in CPU timing will lead to audio separating over longer periods of time. I've had some recordings get to be 2-3 seconds off toward the end.
It also is not forgiving when it comes to latency and having to edit around those types of issues. I end up spending more time tweaking than anything else.
There are some situations where Magic Levels would be amazing to use and I imagine those users are very satisfied with the result. However in my workflow, I really just need to clear out the regions where people arent talking and adjust the audio tracks from there. Someone earlier mentioned Ferrite (iOS) and they have implemented the exact feature. Here's a video how that looks when editing podcasts. https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/02/video-editing-podcasts-with-ferrite-and-apple-pencil/
That's a great workflow but at the end of the day Hindenburg is still better even if I have to manually edit out the spaces between voices. I've gotten pretty good at it but I'd love to see this feature implemented so I can edit faster.
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Andrew
commented
I've been trialling Hindenburg Journalist, to compare it against my current workflow using Ferrite on iOS. I like the features of Hindenburg but without strip silence it is not going to be able to replace Ferrite for me. I hope you come up with a solution.
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DK
commented
The only reason I need to work outside Hindenburg for spoken word is to use ProTools to strip silence. It's such an excellent piece of software and a real delight to use. But the lack of this essential feature really is a nuisance, to put it mildly - particularly with field recordings. Doing it manually in Hindy is way too time-consuming, so I'm begging you, folks - please put strip silence (with auto-fades for newly-separated clips) at the top of the To-Do list!
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Anonymous
commented
Looking forward to a solution. Thanks for the status update.
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Chris Fernandez-Packham
commented
I really wish this feature was in Hindenberg. It is the one thing really holding it back. Currently I have to start in Audacity to do a noise reduction then truncate silence before moving the file into Hindenberg. I'd love to see this in Hindenberg itself!
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Nathan
commented
This is the only reason (I can think of) that I am considering using Logic Pro X. Would love this feature in Hindy!
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Garret
commented
Any chance this is coming soon to Hindenburg? My current workaround involves importing from Pro Tools, but it's the only reason I'm using Pro Tools, so I'm basically paying an expensive subscription for one feature :/
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Bryan Entzminger
commented
I would love this, too.
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A
commented
Hi, new to Hindenburg and love it! Can we get this feature so I don't have to spin up Audacity to do it?
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MN
commented
Did this end up happening for 2.0?
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Lisa Strawn commented
Any update on this? I LOVE Hindenburg but have considered switching or paying for another DAW just for this feature. It would be incredibly useful.
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Colin Conn
commented
Holy cow, you guys would become gods among DAWs in the podcasting sphere if you implemented something like this. I wouldn't even care to just sit back and delete the empty parts if it did the majority of cutting for me.
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Robert Carpenter
commented
Hindy Support, can you clarify why it doesn't make sense to implement Strip Silence in the current version?
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Detect and remove silence is an idea we have on our list of ideas. I had not thought about truncating silence ... but it might be something we can look at.
In the current version of Hindenburg it might not make a world of sense to implement Strip Silence .. but in the coming version it will. We are working hard on Hindenburg 2.0. That something to look forward too. -
Jeff Ruberg
commented
This is the single thing missing from Hindenburg holding me back from being able to use it as my primary DAW. Would be so amazing if it were added.
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Joey
commented
This really takes a lot of time. I never thought about automating this. Great idea!
Since it has already been done by others, it can't be impossible. -
Raygan Kely
commented
Here's a nice write-up of this type of workflow and how Strip Silence helps, by Jason Snell of Macworld. https://sixcolors.com/post/2015/02/how-i-podcast-editing/
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Raygan Kely
commented
This would be extremely useful and I hope it's added soon. Logic and Pro Tools both have this and call it the "Strip Silence" feature. You can set some basic parameters and they take a long audio region and remove the silent or very quiet parts, leaving many smaller regions with gaps between them. This makes editing a lot easier, because with one click you can select and delete unwanted regions.
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Eduo Gutierrez
commented
I would extend this with one of the biggest features from Audacity not yet replicated anywhere else: Truncate Silence.
The requested update is similar to Logic Pro's Strip Silence, which can set a level and outright remove all audio falling below that threshold. Audacity's "truncate silence" goes one step further by doing two things:
- Selects only silence that spans all active tracks (so it won't strip when a person is listening to another, in a different track, talking).
- For all "silence" below the the threshold it not only cuts across all tracks, but also tightens the audio removing the gap altogether.The effect this has on spoken podcasts is immediate and spectacular.
https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/tap070-how-to-use-truncate-silence-and-sound-smarter-with-audacity/