Silence Detection
Silence Detection is the process of automatically analyzing your audio and creating cuts that remove silence — the dead air between moments of speech. In TimeBolt's Multi-Track Editor, this process is not triggered automatically — it must be run manually by clicking the "Run Silence Detection" button. This deliberate, manual approach ensures that the right type of detection is applied to your specific project, since different project structures call for different detection strategies.
Note: Make sure your tracks are synchronized before running Silence Detection. Cuts are calculated based on track positions, so unsynced tracks will produce misaligned results.
Detection Types
Silence Detection is split into two broad categories:
- Each Track Independently — Analyzes every track on its own, generating a separate set of cuts per track. This mode also offers an optional "Duplicate Detection Across Tracks?" variant (covered below).
- Select Specific Track — Analyzes a single track of your choosing and applies its cuts across the project.
Which type you should select depends entirely on the structure of your project — the sections below cover the most common scenarios.
Tip: If you'd like TimeBolt to automatically determine the optimal silence threshold, click the "Set Best Filter Below Sound Level" button after selecting your detection type. TimeBolt will analyze your audio and set the best "Filter Below Sound Level" value for you.
For Projects With a Master Audio File
If your project is built around a single master audio file — one recording that forms the foundation of the entire project — use the "Select Specific Track" option and choose the track containing that master audio.
TimeBolt will run Silence Detection on the master audio track and simultaneously duplicate those cuts onto every other track in the project. The result is a set of perfectly aligned cuts across all tracks, all driven by the audio that matters most.
For Camera Switching Projects
Some projects feature multiple speakers, each with their own video file (or separate audio file), where every speaker's audio matters — think podcasts, interviews, and Riverside recordings.
For these projects, run Silence Detection with "Each Track Independently". Each track is analyzed on its own, independent of the others, producing a distinct set of cuts for each speaker.
When the project is exported, only the detected (non-silent) cuts from each track are kept. The result is a fully cut, camera-switching timeline: each cut is followed by the next available cut on a different track, so the edit naturally jumps to whichever speaker is talking.
For Side-By-Side Camera Projects
Other projects require multiple speakers to be visible in the same cut simultaneously — for example, an interview where both the interviewer's and interviewee's faces must remain in frame at all times. This is similar to a camera switching project, except the cuts need to land in the same positions across all tracks rather than alternating between them.
For this type of project, select "Each Track Independently" and enable its "Duplicate Detection Across Tracks?" checkbox before running detection. This checkbox is not a standalone mode — it's a variant of independent detection that adds a second step:
- Silence Detection first runs independently on each track, detecting when each speaker is talking.
- TimeBolt then creates a union of all detected cuts across the tracks.
In practice, this means that whenever any speaker is talking, the corresponding moment on every other track is also kept in the timeline. Both speakers remain available side by side throughout the edit, while shared silence — dead air where nobody is speaking — is still removed.