How to Automatically Remove Silence in Adobe Premiere Pro Using Audition and Media Encoder
The first cut of editing a long video, stream, or podcast can be incredibly tedious. One of the most time-consuming steps is removing dead air between takes in a video or interesting moments on a stream VOD.
Today, we’ll introduce a method using the Adobe Creative Suite to easily and automatically cut that dead air, saving a ton of time while editing. We’ll use Adobe Premiere Pro, Audition, and Media Encoder—all are necessary.
Step 1: Mark Your Audio in Adobe Audition
You canread up on Adobe Audition basicsto verify you understand the termsMarkerandWaveformbefore diving in.
First, open Adobe Audition and drag your video file into it. You should see an audio waveform on the timeline. Next, open theDiagnosticswindow. Select theMark Audioeffect, and clickFind Levels. Audition will scan your audio to define silence and audio.
You might need to manually tweak these definitions with some trial and error, as the levels Audition defines may be too sensitive and not remove as much silence as you hope. The definitions of silence and audio should have a difference of approximately 7 dB.
We used a setting of -59 dB for 300ms on silence and -52 dB for 200ms on sound with a Shure SM7B at 50 dB of gain and minimal background noise, but ideal settings will vary from mic to mic.
Once you’ve defined silence and sound, clickScan. Next, clickMark Allto create markers to indicate borders between sound and silence.
Next, go to theMarkerswindow, and pressCtrl + A(Cmd + Aon Mac) to select them all. Right-click anywhere in the Marker window, selectChange Marker Type, and click onSubclip.
With all markers set to Subclip, simply save the file. This file only matters for its markers—the audio here will not be used in the final product—so export as a lossy format like mp3 to save disk space. EnsureInclude markers and other metadatais checked as well before clickingOK.
Step 2: Create a Marked Video File in Media Encoder
Adobe Media Encoder is a powerful yet somewhat complicated tool for encoding video, and you might want tolearn a few of its functions first.
Now that you have a marked audio file, we need to turn it into a dummy video file with these markers intact. Open Adobe Media Encoder and drag your marked mp3 file into the queue.
Export settings don’t matter, as the video and audio will not be used in the final product, but one of the fastest export presets on Mac without gigantic file sizes isQuickTime→Apple ProRes 422 Proxy. The exported file should be a black screen with audio.
Once the dummy video file has been exported, open Adobe Premiere Pro.
Step 3: Import Subclips Into Premiere Pro
Before doing anything with your dummy video file containing your markers, create a project in Adobe Premiere Pro and import your original high-quality video file. To be safe, drag it onto the timeline to create a sequence with the correct video settings, then delete it from the timeline while keeping that sequence intact in your project folder.
Next, create a bin in your project, as you’ll have many short clips to import, and a dedicated bin will prevent these potentially hundreds of clips from cluttering your project as you work. Open that bin, right-click anywhere inside it, then selectImport Fileand import your dummy video file.
You’ll see the file itself and many short subclips made from the markers. Select all clips in the bin—they should all have black thumbnails, as there is no actual video in the file, then right-click and selectMake Offline.
Keep all clips selected, right-click again, then selectLink Media, selectLocate, and in the following window select your original video as the media to link.
This will replace the dummy video in Premiere Pro with your original, high-quality video file while retaining all subclips with none of the silence you’d have otherwise tediously cut. Before using these clips, ensure the bin they’re contained in is sorted by name to guarantee your clips end up in the correct order.
Select all now high-quality clips from the bin, excluding the full-length file, and drag them into your video timeline.
From here, aside from making a few corrections to this automation, continue editing normally. As you can see below, this method can cut a substantial amount of unnecessary silence from your footage.
No Attribution Required. Screenshot by Andy Cormier
Limitations, Workarounds, and When It’s Most Useful
This process only takes a few minutes once you can perform each step quickly, but it has a few limitations. Some of these can be alleviated by improving your settings, whereas others require workarounds or extra diligence while editing.
First, if your silence and audio definitions are improper, you may cut things you don’t intend to, like quiet consonants or pauses for dramatic effect. However, you may edit these back in by extending affected clips in your Premiere Pro timeline.
Simply use theRipple Edittool to trim or expand clips. As these clips are linked to your full-length, original video file, they can be extended as much as needed. Considerlearning more Adobe Premiere Pro shortcuts for faster editing.
Similarly, this process will also pick up some unintended sounds, like clicks, loud breaths, and background noise such as traffic—these can also be trimmed out with the Ripple Edit tool.
Next, this method only works on video files with one audio track, at least following the exact steps given. In case you have multiple audio tracks, such as with a recording in OBS or podcasting tools, you’d need to convert these files into a one-track version. You may be able to find other workarounds with some creativity, but we currently recommend using this only with single-track audio files to avoid glitches.
It’s also most useful on long videos with relatively controlled and consistent audio, such as with low background noise and consistent volume on the mic. You probably can use this method with outdoor vlogging, but results may vary when noise is inconsistent. This method is most useful on indoor videos in a controlled environment, such as talking-head videos and podcasts.
Get Ready to Save Time Editing
Despite the limitations, using the method of marking audio in Audition, creating a dummy video in Media Encoder, then replacing the dummy video clips in Premiere Pro, can save a ton of time. The longer the file, the more time saved considering this takes only around a few minutes to complete. What will you create with the time you save?
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