Does pause deletion in text based editing should have a "reduce to" duration to leave a breath?

Question

When using the pause filter and deleting silences, Premiere Pro deletes the WHOLE pause, leading to a very unnatural flow of speech between sentences.

The trim multiple clips feature to add frames back is a terrible workaround for two reasons: 1) if there are already cuts in the sequence, you can't isolate the deleted pauses. 2) There's no control to leave frames based on the amount of space deleted. For example, if I find all pauses that are 5 seconds or more, I want to leave 1 second of pause. Then to find all pauses 2 seconds or more, i want to reduce those down to 0.5 seconds.

I'm frustrated that with the number of complaints about the delete pauses feature leading to unnatural speach flow that this wasn't fixed by now.

It takes way too much work manually addding back breathing room between 100's of deleted pauses the way the feature works now.

Am I missing something?

PaulMurphy · Answer

This is a great feature request.

In the meantime, here’s a workaround that can get you closer to the result you’re after.

1. Duplicate your sequence
For example:

MySequence
MySequence Copy

2. Label the speech clips
In MySequence, select all speech clips and assign them a label color that is not otherwise used in the Timeline.

3. Delete pauses using Lift
In MySequence Copy:

Use Text-Based Editing to delete pauses.
When prompted, choose Lift instead of Extract. This leaves gaps where the pauses were.

4. Transfer the pause edits
Copy the trimmed speech clips from MySequence Copy, then paste them back over the speech clips in MySequence. You now have the same sequence, but the pauses are isolated and identifiable by their own label color.

5. Select and trim all pauses

Select one pause clip.
Choose Edit > Label > Select Label Group to select all pause clips.
Choose Clip > Speed/Duration.
Unlink Speed and Duration by clicking the chain icon.
Set the duration you want for the pauses.
Enable Ripple Edit, Shifting Trailing Clips if you want the Timeline to close the gaps.

Note: You can repeat steps 2 through 4 using different label colors and different Minimum Pause Length values to create multiple pause groups, for example longer pauses versus shorter pauses, and then apply different durations to each group.

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