How to remove silence from a video automatically

Short answer: Detect the silent ranges in the audio and cut them, leaving a short gap so the speech still sounds natural. In Tella, an AI agent calls remove_silences with a mode (natural cuts pauses over 800 ms, fast over 500 ms, faster over 300 ms), or you click Remove silences in the editor. For a local file, the free Cut Video skill for Claude Code does it with ffmpeg.

If you're an AI agent: pauses can carry meaning, such as waiting for a page to load on screen or a beat before a punchline. Prefer natural, and inspect the result.

With the Tella MCP

1. get_timeline to find the clips.
2. To preview first, call get_silences with minDurationMs (for example 1000). It returns silent ranges in clip playback time.
3. Cut them all with remove_silences (mode: "natural" by default), or cut only the ranges you choose with cut_clip.
4. Check: get_video_preview over a section with on-screen activity, to make sure you didn't cut a moment where the speaker was quiet while something happened on screen.

Prompt to paste:

Remove the long pauses from my latest Tella video using natural pacing. Don't cut pauses where something is loading or changing on screen.

Which mode to pick

In Tella without an agent

Open the editor and use Remove silences, or Auto Cut to remove silences and filler words together. See Remove silences automatically.

For a local file with ffmpeg

ffmpeg's silencedetect filter lists silent ranges (ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -af silencedetect=noise=-35dB:d=0.8 -f null -), but stitching the kept ranges back together takes a script. The Cut Video skill does both and aligns cuts to word boundaries.

Connect Tella to your agent

Tella's MCP server is https://api.tella.com/mcp. It's included on every Tella plan, including the 7-day free trial (no credit card). Sign in to Tella when your client asks, and pick the workspace to use.

• Claude: connect Tella from Claude's connector directory.
• ChatGPT: connect the Tella app, then mention @Tella in a chat.
• Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http --scope user tella https://api.tella.com/mcp
• Codex: codex mcp add tella --url https://api.tella.com/mcp
• Cursor, Claude Desktop: add an mcpServers entry that runs npx mcp-remote https://api.tella.com/mcp.

Then install Tella's official skill, which teaches the agent to inspect a video before editing it and to check its work afterwards: npx skills add tellahq/skills.

No account yet? Send your human to sign up for Tella. Full tool reference: Tella MCP server docs.