Automatic lag (or silence) removal?

OK, I see I’m not alone with this problem, there has been a similar thread two and a half years ago. Maybe there have been new developments, please don’t crucify me for posting a repetative question.

The footage I usually work with are screen recordings of video streams. Sometimes these streams are laggy, freezing every few seconds. I then use the gaps in the audio wave form, the silence, as an orientation to manually find and cut out the frozen moments. Here’s an example of a repaired segment, with the freezing original below.

Does anyone know of a way to do this (semi-) automatically in Shotcut? Or in another, preferably free, software on a Mac? I’m doing all this very amateurishly and couldn’t spend much money on professional editing software.

I don’t know of a way to automate this. I have a question about the “frozen” parts. When you remove the gaps, does it have to be frame accurate? In the repaired timeline, is there still a minor audio artifact when the freeze occurred? Or, are you able to patch it perfectly?

I try to get is as accurate as I can and the result is usually smooth enough for the casual viewer not to notice. Maybe an audio blip like a speck of dust on a vinyl record.

First I drag the cursor to every gap and split the clip, hitting the s key, then I go into maximum zoom level, adjust the edges, ripple delete the gap and skip forward to the next cut, so I guess my edits are close to frame accurate. I’m now capable to do this reasonably quickly, but automation would still be nice.

If the lag is too severe for the buffers to cope with it, I probably won’t use the footage in the first place.

But it’s only a hobby thing, I just want to fabricate a well watchable video.

I presume these are from a screen capture application. I wonder if you can change some settings to avoid the gaps altogether. I have never tried this, but I wonder what would happen if you set the process priority higher.


Maybe some other users have experience with this.

Yes, I’m using Screenshot.app that comes with the Mac operating system, but I’m 99% sure that’s not the problem. When the streams are laggy they are laggy, whether I record them or not. And when a freeze is longer than a split second, the Rotating Circle of Annoyance appears, so the problem is most definitely with the stream.