Filler Words - Don't ignore/remove unless they can be cleanly removed
under consideration
Major Editing
ABSOLUTELY!!!! I just posted about this not 2 minutes ago!!!
Gabe Michalski
Merged in a post:
Cleanup after removing filler words
K
Karen Schouest
It would be nice if Descript could clean up the punctuation after removing filler words instead of leaving the transcript riddled with punctuation oddities such as "? ," " , " " . " ". . " and many, many sentences that begin with a lowercase letter.
M
Mike Goodridge
Completely agree. Wholesale removal of filler words can cause a nightmare when editing, especially if you weren't paying attention to the cut afterwards! I also feel like the removal process has gotten worse as far as how cleanly things were removed in previous versions.
SmartCarrion
It needs to be multi-track aware - if there is a filler word on one track and the other has good audio, just mute the filler word. If the other track is silent, then cut the whole segment.
Laura Burkhauser
under consideration
A
Alex Newton
Laura Burkhauser - this is great that this finally gets under consideration. Please let the developers know that should solve this in one go with the issue of "APPLY ALL" for word gaps. In still 20%+ of cases the audio of preceeding words/sounds is cut off, rendering the Apply All function effectively completely useless. We are close to migrating to another AI audio tool as Descript has not resolved this in more than 1.5 years.
P
Pierre
Alex NewtonWhich other tool? :)
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Alex Newton
Pierre
For Video, we are looking at auto-silence removal by:
Wondershare Filmora
and some adobe premiere plugin
For podcast/audio only:
Here are 10 tools for testing silence removal
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Editorial
I agree. We also need the option to remove filler words only from the transcript. Sometimes we only need the subtitles to be as clean as possible but without removing filler words from media as some speakers use a lot of them and if we only have the option to remove it from media it will make the person sound robotic and the video in general jumpy and abruptly cut. This option was available before and it has been removed, but it's necessary.
Will Kommor
Just to add a point here for any Descript devs reading:
It's not just about cutting in the middle of waveforms. When filler words starting with "liquid consonants" like L or R come after a word ending in a vowel, that preceding word is changed fundamentally to the point where a clean cut is impossible.
"To, like, go somewhere" is a great example. The speaker here would be saying "to like" as "tullike", and so cutting the filler word the current way gives you an ugly "tul- go somewhere".
An effective "like," removal tool would either AI-generate the "tul-" into "to", or ignore the instance entirely.
C
Cody Salinas
Will Kommor: This is a perfect description of the current filler remove result. It takes some creative clipping and timing to get it perfect sometimes.
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Alex Newton
This is so much needed, especially for WORD GAPS where the function performs much worse than for filler words. One cannot select "APPLY TO ALL" safely on word gaps because in at least 30% of cases the elimination cuts into ending syllables of previous words or starting syllables (less often) of ensuing words.
Right now, one has to manually do F3, have the next gap selected, visually check it, and then - if required required adjust the selection before deletion. Very tedious!
A way to improve it, is to clean up the transcript, but who wants that for editing a 1 hour webinar?
Also NOTE - in NEW STORYBOARD - the workflow has totally broken down, because once you start editing the range of a selected word gap the word gap panel disappears and when you want to continue, you have to start "remove filler words / or remove gaps" command anew.
Julia Koehler
Agreed. I actually feel like the version of Descript 2 weeks ago did a MUCH better job removing filler words, removing word gaps and optimizing the transitions. I barely needed to edit after that. Now, with the update, this has gotten MUCH worse, unfortunately, creating a ton of manual adjustments.
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Alex Wait
also, if there was an option to "highlight" all filler words that are selected or "searched for" in addition to remove/ignore or correct transcript.
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