--- title: "AUTOMATICALLY Remove SILENCES In Davinci Resolve" author: "Sarah Williams" category: Tutorials excerpt: "Learn how to automatically detect and delete dead air, pauses, and silences in your video edits using DaVinci Resolve Studio's AI transcription and Audio Detection tools." --- To automatically remove silences from a video in DaVinci Resolve, you must use the AI-powered "Auto-Align" or "Detect Silences" features located within the transcription window or the Fairlight page. By analyzing the audio waveforms of a selected clip, DaVinci Resolve Studio identifies gaps below a specific decibel threshold and automatically ripple-deletes them, condensing a 20-minute rambling take into a tight, fast-paced edit instantly. ## What is automatic silence removal? Automatic silence removal is an AI-driven editing feature that scans an audio track for periods of dead air (pauses, breaths, or completely silent moments between dialogue) and automatically cuts them out. This tool is a massive time-saver for podcast editors, YouTube vloggers, and course creators. Traditionally, an editor had to visually scrub the timeline, manually place a razor cut before and after every flat waveform, and ripple-delete the gap. Automatic removal condenses this hour-long task into a single click, immediately creating a "jump-cut" style video. ## How to remove silences using the Audio Detection tool? The most robust method to remove dead air is using the dedicated Audio Detection feature on the Edit page timeline. 1. **Select the Clip:** Place your long, unedited video clip on the Edit page timeline. Click to highlight it. 2. **Open the Transient Tool:** In the top menu bar, go to `Timeline > Audio > Detect Transients` (or `Detect Silences` depending on your Resolve version). 3. **Set the Threshold:** A dialogue box will appear. Adjust the "Threshold" slider (e.g., -35dB). This tells the software that any audio falling below this volume is considered "silence." 4. **Set the Padding:** Adjust the "Padding" slider (e.g., 0.2 seconds). This ensures the cut doesn't happen exactly on the first syllable of a word, preventing the dialogue from sounding clipped or unnatural. 5. **Execute the Cuts:** Click "Analyze" or "Delete." DaVinci Resolve will automatically slice the clip and ripple-delete all the silent sections, snapping the spoken dialogue tightly together. ## How to remove silences using the AI Transcription window? If you are using DaVinci Resolve Studio 18.5 or newer, you can remove silences visually using the built-in AI transcription tool. 1. **Transcribe the Audio:** Right-click the clip in your Media Pool and select `Audio Transcription > Transcribe`. 2. **Open the Window:** The transcription window will open, displaying all the spoken dialogue as text. 3. **Locate the Ellipses (...):** You will notice `[...]` scattered throughout the text. These ellipses represent periods of silence or dead air detected by the AI. 4. **Remove the Pauses:** Click the three-dot menu icon in the top right corner of the transcription window. Select `Remove Silent Portions`. 5. **Insert to Timeline:** The AI instantly deletes all the `[...]` sections from the text. When you click "Append" or "Insert" to drop this transcribed text onto your Edit timeline, all the silences are already removed. ## How to refine the automatic jump cuts? While automatic silence removal is fast, the resulting jump cuts can be jarring if the speaker's head snaps back and forth unnaturally between every sentence. To refine the automatic cuts: * **Add Smooth Cuts:** Highlight all the newly created cuts on your timeline. Go to `Effects > Toolbox > Transitions`, find "Smooth Cut," and drag it onto the highlighted edits. Resolve uses optical flow to morph the frames together, hiding the jump cut. (Note: This only works well if the subject hasn't moved significantly). * **Punch In:** Select every alternating clip on the timeline, open the Inspector, and increase the "Zoom" to 1.150. This creates a "fake multi-cam" angle, making the jump cuts feel intentional and dynamic rather than like mistakes. * **Cover with B-Roll:** The best way to hide audio jump cuts is to place B-roll video or graphics on Video Track 2 (V2) directly over the cut points. ## How to speed up heavy dialogue editing workflows? While DaVinci Resolve's built-in silence removal is powerful, processing hour-long files locally can be slow, and the timeline can become overwhelmingly cluttered with hundreds of tiny cuts. Professional editors avoid this by using dedicated AI pre-editing platforms: * **Upload Raw Media:** They send the unedited 2-hour interview to [Cutsio](https://cutsio.com). * **Automate the Cleanup:** Cutsio instantly transcribes the video and automatically highlights/removes all filler words ("um," "uh") and dead silences in the cloud. * **Extract the Story:** The editor reads the clean text, highlights the best narrative flow, and exports an XML file. * **Instant Assembly:** When they import the XML into DaVinci Resolve, the timeline is already perfectly paced, fully assembled, and free of dead air, completely bypassing the need to run local audio detection tools. ## Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) ### Can I automatically remove silences in the free version of DaVinci Resolve? No. The advanced Audio Transcription engine and automated silence detection tools are Neural Engine features exclusive to DaVinci Resolve Studio (the paid version). Free users must manually razor-cut the silent waveforms on the timeline. ### Why did the tool cut off the beginnings of my words? If the first syllable of a word is clipped, your "Threshold" is set too low (e.g., -20dB), or your "Padding" is set to zero. The software cut the audio the exact millisecond the volume dropped. Increase the Padding to 0.15 or 0.2 seconds to leave a tiny "breath" of room before the word starts. ### Does silence removal work if there is background noise? If you have a loud air conditioner or street traffic humming constantly in the background, the audio level will never drop below your threshold, and the tool will detect "zero silences." You must first apply DaVinci Resolve's "Voice Isolation" effect to remove the background noise, render the clip, and *then* run the silence detection tool on the clean dialogue. By mastering the Threshold and Padding settings within the Audio Detection or Transcription tools, you can automate the most tedious part of video editing and drastically speed up your DaVinci Resolve workflow.