A faster way to 'censor' or "BEEP" audio parts of a video

[Asbesto]

Hello,

A very time consuming part of my video editing is the audio ‘censorship’ part of bad words from a video. I have to split the video in the exact part, then detach the audio, mute the new audio track, then add a new track, create a BEEP sound using the audio tone generator, put it in the new track just added, then cut to the position and then delete the remaining beep sound.

This is a real torture to do, especially when I have to insert BEEPS! into a video with a lot of curses

MY DREAM will be a plugin in which I simply select a part of the video and click “CENSOR AUDIO”, and everything will be done for me.

Maybe there’s a simpler way to do this? IDK. Please let me know.

I hope this is a feature that can be added to shotcut

[MusicalBox]

Hi @Asbesto

@Asbesto

a plugin in which I simply select a part of the video and click “CENSOR AUDIO”, and everything will be done for me.

That would be useful for a lot of people, I’m sure.

In the meantime, this is the workflow I’d use:

First, when you are done editing your project (except for the audio censoring part), export it with, for example, the name my-movie_to-censor.mp4

Step 1: Create a beep clip (you only need to do this once)

• Open Shotcut.
• Create a 5-second Audio Tone clip.
• Add an audio Gain / Volume filter and reduce it to -25dB.
• Go to the Export panel.
• Choose one of the audio presets.
• Export with the name beep (e.g. beep.wav)

Step 2: Prepare your my-movie_to-censor.mp4 clip:
(you would need to do most of these whatever the method you use)

• Start a new Shotcut project.
• Add your beep.wav clip to the Playlist.
• Add your my-movie_to-censor.mp4 clip to the Timeline.
• Right-click and Detach Audio.
• Add markers everywhere the audio needs to be censored.
• Select the detached audio clip.
• Split the audio clip at every marker.

Step 3: Censor your audio

• Go to the Playlist and double-click the beep.wav clip. This will load it in the Source
• Right-click the first split clip in the Audio track.
• Choose Replace. This replaces the clip with the one currently in the Source, without changing its duration.
• Repeat for each of the split audio clips.

This is still quite a bit of work, but using the Replace feature eliminates a lot of steps.

[shotcut]

One could probably make a script to do this possibly with the assistance of AI.

Hello World script-as-filter example

In version 26.6 now you can install a custom filter UI into the App Data Directory extensions/filters/<your-filter>. You need to follow the example and structure of one of the installed filters, but here is a zip archive that shows how to use this feature as a way to run a general script. The zip contains extensions/filters/hello-world so extract it to the top of Shotcut’s app data directory. extensions_filters_hello-world.zip (1.1 KB) What does it do? [Screenshot_2026-06-26_17-06-43] [Scr…

Shotcut - QML Scripting API

As a script filter, you can add it to the tone generator or audio file, and it would use that as the source and apply at all markers of a certain color. The script can have a UI to show the marker colors in use and a default duration if the marker has no duration.

[Asbesto]

(post deleted by author)

[Asbesto]

@MusicalBox

Hi @Asbesto

In the meantime, this is the workflow I’d use:

Thank you but this is WAAAAY LONGER and more complicated than what I actualy do

[MusicalBox]

@Asbesto

Thank you but this is WAAAAY LONGER and more complicated than what I actualy do

Sorry, I probably didn’t understand your steps then. You seem to repeat most of them on every part you need to censor. Using the Replace feature eliminates some of those steps, which, I believe, makes the torture a little bit less painful.