Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
After making almost 300 videos (mostly coding videos), I recently made a breakthrough in how I edit my videos. I want to share it with you. For a long time, I edited my videos together mostly as one take. I want to leave the mistakes in the videos so people can learn from those mistakes, but I have also received feedback in YouTube comments that there is too much "dead air" in the videos I had been releasing.
I started to try to cut parts that didn't add value, but there was a lot of guesswork, trial and error, and lack of precision.
Then I discovered The Way of the Waveform. In OpenShot, you can right click on a clip in the timeline, select Display ➡️ Show Waveform. I zoom down to where the timeline shows you 4 second increments and look for pauses long enough to edit out.
To be even more productive, you can set the playhead to where you want to cut and use CTRL+K (CMD+K for Macs) to split your video. This feels more precise, more productive, and less error-prone than trying to toggle the Razor Tool to cut and then untoggle it to move the clips.
This video covers:
0:00:00 Introduction
0:01:51 Demonstrate the way I had been producing videos
0:04:05 Remove all but the first large clip from the timeline to reset things
0:04:24 Set the zoom level and show the waveform
0:05:12 Start evaluating and clipping out the longer silence spots
0:08:05 Attempt to demonstrate speeding up a clip. Accidentally had multiple clips selected. Recover by using Reset Time.
0:09:51 The importance of saving a project when you are doing this type of editing
0:11:16 Writing video description with timestamps as you edit
0:12:14 Productivity hack: Use the playhead and CTRL+K (CMD+K) instead of the Razor Tool
0:13:31 Actual example of speeding up a clip instead of cutting and removing
0:16:33 Export partial progress when OpenShot starts to lag from too many clips
0:18:32 Import exported clip into a new project and continue editing
0:20:43 Tip: When changing the speed of a clip, explicitly set the volume to zero to avoid weird audio artifacts
0:21:53 Attempt to set volume to zero and speed up multiple clips at once. Use at your own peril...
0:23:16 Demonstration of the "'python 3' is not responding" behavior when you have too many clips on the timeline
0:24:31 Review saved time (over 30 minutes!) and do final export from OpenShot
0:25:41 Use HandBrake to transcode the output file for smaller file size to upload to YouTube
#openshot #editing #statelesscode #deadair #videoediting #waveform #handbrake #transcode #screencast #howthesausageismade
Featured Playlist:
- youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9kkbu1kLUeO1e13EQdiIZ8mO6kHePLYp
Resources that we relied upon for this solution:
- OpenShot openshot.org
- OpenShot User Guide openshot.org/user-guide
The video edited in this video:
- youtu.be/tIN8ymuJep0
This video is CC0 - No rights reserved. (YouTube doesn't allow this option when publishing.) All code is released under the UNLICENSE. Stateless Code denies the concept of "intellectual property". Copying is not stealing.
After making almost 300 videos (mostly coding videos), I recently made a breakthrough in how I edit my videos. I want to share it with you. For a long time, I edited my videos together mostly as one take. I want to leave the mistakes in the videos so people can learn from those mistakes, but I have also received feedback in YouTube comments that there is too much "dead air" in the videos I had been releasing.
I started to try to cut parts that didn't add value, but there was a lot of guesswork, trial and error, and lack of precision.
Then I discovered The Way of the Waveform. In OpenShot, you can right click on a clip in the timeline, select Display ➡️ Show Waveform. I zoom down to where the timeline shows you 4 second increments and look for pauses long enough to edit out.
To be even more productive, you can set the playhead to where you want to cut and use CTRL+K (CMD+K for Macs) to split your video. This feels more precise, more productive, and less error-prone than trying to toggle the Razor Tool to cut and then untoggle it to move the clips.
This video covers:
0:00:00 Introduction
0:01:51 Demonstrate the way I had been producing videos
0:04:05 Remove all but the first large clip from the timeline to reset things
0:04:24 Set the zoom level and show the waveform
0:05:12 Start evaluating and clipping out the longer silence spots
0:08:05 Attempt to demonstrate speeding up a clip. Accidentally had multiple clips selected. Recover by using Reset Time.
0:09:51 The importance of saving a project when you are doing this type of editing
0:11:16 Writing video description with timestamps as you edit
0:12:14 Productivity hack: Use the playhead and CTRL+K (CMD+K) instead of the Razor Tool
0:13:31 Actual example of speeding up a clip instead of cutting and removing
0:16:33 Export partial progress when OpenShot starts to lag from too many clips
0:18:32 Import exported clip into a new project and continue editing
0:20:43 Tip: When changing the speed of a clip, explicitly set the volume to zero to avoid weird audio artifacts
0:21:53 Attempt to set volume to zero and speed up multiple clips at once. Use at your own peril...
0:23:16 Demonstration of the "'python 3' is not responding" behavior when you have too many clips on the timeline
0:24:31 Review saved time (over 30 minutes!) and do final export from OpenShot
0:25:41 Use HandBrake to transcode the output file for smaller file size to upload to YouTube
#openshot #editing #statelesscode #deadair #videoediting #waveform #handbrake #transcode #screencast #howthesausageismade
Featured Playlist:
- youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9kkbu1kLUeO1e13EQdiIZ8mO6kHePLYp
Resources that we relied upon for this solution:
- OpenShot openshot.org
- OpenShot User Guide openshot.org/user-guide
The video edited in this video:
- youtu.be/tIN8ymuJep0
This video is CC0 - No rights reserved. (YouTube doesn't allow this option when publishing.) All code is released under the UNLICENSE. Stateless Code denies the concept of "intellectual property". Copying is not stealing.
