Cookbook

Short, practical recipes for getting started with auto-editor. Each one is a command you can copy, paste, and tweak. Replace video.mp4 with your own file.

The simplest edit

Cut out the silent "dead space" automatically. This is all you need to start:

auto-editor video.mp4

The result is written to video_ALTERED.mp4. To name it yourself, use -o:

auto-editor video.mp4 -o trimmed.mp4

Look before you render

See how much will be cut without producing a file yet:

auto-editor video.mp4 --preview

Make the pace feel natural

By default auto-editor keeps 0.2 seconds of padding around each kept section so cuts don't feel abrupt. Widen it to let speech breathe, or use different padding before and after:

# 0.5 seconds of padding on both sides
auto-editor video.mp4 --margin 0.5sec

# 0.3s before, 1.5s after
auto-editor video.mp4 --margin 0.3sec,1.5sec

Cut more (or less) aggressively

--edit decides what counts as "loud enough" to keep. Raise the threshold to cut more, lower it to keep more. You can use a percentage or a dB value:

# Keep only louder audio (cuts more)
auto-editor video.mp4 --edit audio:threshold=6%

# The same idea in decibels
auto-editor video.mp4 --edit audio:-18dB

Cut by motion instead of sound

Useful for screen recordings or silent footage — drop the still parts:

auto-editor video.mp4 --edit motion:threshold=2%

Speed through silence instead of cutting it

Keep every moment, but fast-forward the quiet parts:

auto-editor video.mp4 -w:0 speed:8

See the Actions Cookbook for volume, zoom, overlays, and more.

Trim the beginning or end

# Drop the first and last 30 seconds, on top of the automatic edit
auto-editor video.mp4 --cut-out start,30sec -30sec,end

Edit by what was said

Transcribe speech, then cut on the words. First make subtitles, then edit with them:

auto-editor whisper video.mp4 ggml-medium.en.bin --format srt -o video.srt
auto-editor video.mp4 --edit subtitle

Auto-Editor understands video.srt is related to video.mp4. See the whisper command for more details.

Hand off to your video editor

Instead of rendering, export a project you can open in your editor:

auto-editor video.mp4 --export premiere

Auto-editor can also export to resolve, final-cut-pro, shotcut, and kdenlive. To get each kept section as its own file, use clip-sequence:

auto-editor video.mp4 --export clip-sequence

Edit straight from a URL

If yt-dlp is installed, pass a link as the input:

auto-editor "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcs82HnguGc"