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

Suggestion
1

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 :slight_smile:

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 :slight_smile:

2

Hi @Asbesto

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.

3

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

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.

5

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

6

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.

7

Hi

I feel your pain, especially in the number of mouseclicks required to put these in place.
Here’s an alternative approach, and simpler to execute and trim accurately, and is Non-Destructive.
It’s based on Keyframes which I use extensively for other reasons, and this is a simple application by comparison.

With the finished video on one video track, add a filter ‘Gain/Volume’ to the LHS Track master control. Alternatively this could be to a particular video segment, or for a complex video with multiple tracks, add the filter to the ‘Output’ and accept the warning.
With the Gain filter added, ensure it is set to 0dB and the timeline marker/head is at the point where the BEEP is required, then enable Keyframes for the Gain. Position the Timeline panel as 3/4 of the usual space on the screen, add a Keyframes panel and position it in the 1/4 of space below the Timeline. (This Keyframes panel can alternatively be positioned to the LHS of the main Timeline, since vertical alignment isn’t really necessary as it could have a different timespan (usually zoomed in more, to provide greater control).

Now, create a BEEP sound as described by others. First create an audio track then the BEEP audio, and drop it onto the audio track timeline roughly in the position it’s needed. Set the Gain to -70dB (ie it is muted) then add Keyframes to it.

Zoom in on each timeline/keyframes panel to the area where the BEEP is required. You can now create an audio volume ‘dip’ in the main video soundtrack’s keyframe panel, and raise the BEEP volume level (-25dB or whatever level suits) in the BEEP Keyframes panel. Each of these just requires 4 Keyframe points to create a short duration ‘trapezoid’ - one is a dip from 0dB to -70dB, the other is a Blip from -70dB to -25dB. Adjust timings to suit the situation. With the Timelines zoomed in, you have very precise control over their start, stop and overlap points, particularly as this provides a graphical representation of the audio levels where each point can be easily moved (in time and level) for precise control.

Having created the first BEEP, it’s a simple matter to create other ‘dips’ in the main audio, and similar BEEPs further along the track. An alternative approach to the BEEP track is not to use an overall Keyframes parameter for the track, but just to create a single standalone BEEP with Keyframes controlling its levels, then use copy/paste to create others, thus minimising the steps required, whilst each can be adjusted via its own keyframes to give the required duration and level at that point, as shown in the screen-grab.

If you’re familiar with using Keyframes you’ll see how simple this is, and powerful in the way it is a simple graphical approach to adjusting a parameter. And it is non-destructive (e,g, if the filter is disabled).

If you’re not familiar with Keyframes, this is a good target to practice on and to get familiar with the controls of the Keyframe parameter. It can also be used to manually adjust the audio level of the main video (manual normalisation !) or to mix between various audio sources. I use this on multi-track videos to do all the mixing between tracks. It is the graphical visibility of the Keyframed parameters in a separate viewer which makes it straightforward and quite powerful.

Sorry for the wordy step-by-step description - as usual it’s quicker to do in practice than describe !

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8

Thank you but I still believe that, in the editing phase, my method is way faster, I do it while editing the video, so:

  • I cut begin and end of the part to be censored
  • I detach the audio (it goes in another audio track, that I mute)
  • I click the BEEP sound from the playlist and DRAG it in another audio track below the cut audio part
  • The cursor is already at the end of the selection to be censored, the selected track is already the BEEP sound, so I just press S, then click the remaining BEEP sound and press BACKSPACE, trimming the BEEP sound with the exact lenght as the part to be censored.

Voila’. Very simple. Maybe I have to make a video about this :slight_smile:

But anyway, is a ripetitive and tedious task and simply having a “CENSOR BEEP” filter to be applied will be so, so helpful!!! Just a filter. I mean, there are audio filters that do magic, it is so difficult to do a filter that simply transform the sound in a BEEP on a certain frequency and volume?

So the task will be: cut the audio part (S, S), select it, add filter “Censor Beep”. END.

Simple and effective.

I’m not able to program it (I was a programmer AGES ago, lol) - I can only present some ideas :slight_smile:

9

to do this kind of thing it is probably better to work with some script outside shotcut tbf, as it is repeated for multiple videos and not really an artistic part but mechanic

10

Hi @Asbesto - I just created a Bleep Censor Tone" filter! Please see this thread I opened:

11

WOW, I will try it ASAP! Thank you!!!