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automatically removing 'ums' from a camtasia record

by lunchboxdiet
29 replies
Hi there!

I was wondering whether anybody had any tips for removing 'ums' from camtasia videos automatically?

Thanks

Simon
#automatically #camtasia #record #removing #ums
  • Profile picture of the author LanceT
    There is not a real easy way besides zooming in on the timeline and manually cutting them out.

    My suggestion would be to just leave them in there and work on getting better everytime you do a recording.

    A lot of time I see people "sitting" on a great product because of "ummms"...

    Better to get it out there and then get better for the next one.

    My experience has been that the marketplace is very forgiving of this type of thing if you have good information.

    Plus doing video or webinars is something that most people shy away from, so just the fact that you have a product like that will make it "good enough" for market.

    Lance
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  • Profile picture of the author Amy Carczak
    Here's how I do it.

    You will ALWAYS screw up ...

    You cannot shoot a 3 minute video and
    sound good the entire time. You must edit
    to sound good.

    But here's a good way to do it. Recored as
    though you're doing it in sections. Then when
    you screw up, stop, leave a gap, then start over
    at the beginning of the statement / sentance.

    The you edit the entire sentance out and in the
    end, you sound like a pro even though you
    stammered through it all.
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    • Profile picture of the author Eddieheli
      Leave them in, it sounds more natural, that is if you are trying to come across as yourself and not some professional voice over artist.
      Depends what the video is for whether its worth editing.

      Good advice from Amy though if you are going to edit, or if you just lose your way through the presentation.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Murphy
    Leave them in and try to make less of them as you make more videos/audios.

    Cap your takes at 2-3 as things start to sound mechanical after that.

    Its more naturally to hear you speak how you actually speak rather than having it just perfect with no flubs whatsoever. Most do not speak that way.
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    • Profile picture of the author Shannon Herod
      I leave the vast majority of my umms in, but if while I am editing I notice it getting bad in a certain area I will go ahead and edit a few out. It takes just a couple seconds.

      Shannon
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  • Profile picture of the author Troy Trump
    Another easy way to find your screw ups when editing is to hit "Control M" when you mess up during recordings. That will place a marker in your video time line at the spot you screwed up.
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  • Profile picture of the author paulie888
    Unless the screw ups are really bad, I'd say just leave them in. Even professional marketers like Frank Kern and Ryan Deiss leave lots of pauses and "umms" in their videos - no one's really going to care as long as your content is solid!
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  • Profile picture of the author Online Bliss
    Leave them in, it sounds more natural, that is if you are trying to come across as yourself and not some professional voice over artist.
    As a former Sound Engineer and also a former member of Toastmaster.
    I am against the Umms. I can see the point some make about coming off
    as a Marketer instead of a Voice-Over Artist, so I am changing my stance.

    However I believe that there is no excuse
    for not editing out the many Coughs I hear
    in countless marketing or video tutorials I have paid for. :confused:

    My 2 cents
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    • Profile picture of the author jasonblake10
      Originally Posted by Online Bliss View Post

      As a former Sound Engineer and also a former member of Toastmaster.
      I am against the Umms. I can see the point some make about coming off
      as a Marketer instead of a Voice-Over Artist, so I am changing my stance.

      However I believe that there is no excuse
      for not editing out the many Coughs I hear
      in countless marketing or video tutorials I have paid for. :confused:

      My 2 cents
      Coughs are definitely worse than ums.
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      • Profile picture of the author Marty S
        Uhhhhh ;-) you know what? Uhhhms are one of the most irritating things you can have in a video, so I mostly disagree with a lot of what has been said here, save for the case of leaving in a select few for effect, or naturalization.

        Come on people now, you don't need perfection, but you do need to make an effort to sound professional and deliver with efficiency. Not only are these type of vocal habits terribly irritating to listen to, they also slow down the video and you simply CANNOT afford to risk your viewer becoming impatient with your delivery. I have made hundreds of videos, and I did a lot of that annoying stuff when I started as well, and those videos almost ALWAYS have drastic drop off rates way before the video ends.

        Viewers demand instant value for their time spent with you, and if you continually interrupt the delivery of said value, you are going to be losing those viewers which you worked hard to get in the first place. Not only that, lets say they start watching another video from you in the future - your video may very well get blitzed before they even know what you have to say, because they REMEMBER the annoying hell you put them through before. All right, enough of the bad video rant so ...

        Here are 3 STEPS you can do to ELIMINATE bad vocals, and engage your viewers in smooth sounding, seductive audio.

        1- Write an engaging script. Even if you are doing a Screencast do it ad lib the first time, then go over your own audio and write what you really meant to say the first time. Ditch your first audio track and record a new one in Audacity or GarageBand. You can always adjust the speed of the visuals to match what you are saying in your new, professional sounding audio.

        2- Practice your script 2 or 3 times before recording. Repeat each paragraph so that you pick the best one when editing. Practice sounding natural, not like you are reading or yelling at your audience. A little chuckle or humor goes a long way for this.

        3- Edit your audio outside of Camtasia. Do it in Audacity (PC) or GarageBand (Mac) as both of those programs have much better editing capabilities. Then import your finished track into your video project, then start editing. Like it shows in this article here:

        Create your audio file first for your videos. | Video

        If you notice it now, - as you are first starting to create videos, trust me you won't be able to watch your own videos a few months from now because of how poor the audio is.

        I sincerely hope that helps you, and for the love of God people... uuhhhh stop it. Just... uhhhh... stop it all.
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  • Profile picture of the author eQuus
    Umms are acceptable, what I hate are those who cough right into the mic and deliver a shattering sonic boom down to my ear drums. They will answer to that on judgment day for sure.
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  • Profile picture of the author InternetSuccess001
    1. Practise speaking without ums.
    2. Have a script prepared that you can read from as you do your presentation.
    3. Edit out the ums.
    4. Pay for expensive sound software, in which you can 'search and replace' ums with nothing. Does a heuristic analysis of your 'um' waveform, and can remove matching patterns within %'s that you specify.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonblake10
    Originally Posted by lunchboxdiet View Post

    Hi there!

    I was wondering whether anybody had any tips for removing 'ums' from camtasia videos automatically?

    Thanks

    Simon
    The best way to deal with "ums" is not not put them in the recordings in the first place. Although "ums" happen natually, they can really be distracting if they occur too frequently, such as after every few words. It is really easy to stop saying um if you try. You can train your self to pause instead. If you pause instead of saying um, it becomes a lot easier to remove when editing the video because the pauses show up as flat lines on the audio track.
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  • Profile picture of the author Glenn Leader
    I tend to find that if you have quiet background music, it often distracts from the
    occasional umms, and long silent pauses. But as Marty says, I try to edit out as
    many as I can, but it's usually not possible to completely get rid of them.

    And in any case... look at professional broad casters, they make these same urrms..
    ummms etc... most people don't even notice... they deliver the content with rhythm
    and pace.

    HTH

    Glenn
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  • Profile picture of the author tht222
    Always record your audio separately as it is ten times easier to edit it even with free tools like Audacity rather than within Camtasia - you can cut and paste chunks, delete them, mix tracks and so on…
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  • Profile picture of the author Bill_Z
    I find it difficult to edit them out using Camtasia. Use Audacity, it's much easier. And I disagree with alot of people here, one or two ummm's is OK but too many is super annoying.
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael Oksa
    You would be amazed at how many ums you can eliminate by telling yourself you won't say them. When you get to a spot where you would say "um", replace it with silence. You'll be fine as long as the silence isn't too long. Generally speaking, an um sounds kind of dumb, but silence sounds like you are just trying to choose your words carefully.

    If you just can't think of what to say, hit the pause button right away. Then restart it as soon as you know what you'll say.

    Another possibility, and what I like to do is make smaller videos. If you only have five minutes to make your point, it forces you to do so, and minimizes rambling. It also helps you stay focused on one specific point at a time. Besides, it's much easier to take a few ums in smaller chunks, as opposed to hearing somebody say "um" for 30 minutes.

    All the best,
    Michael
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  • Profile picture of the author Tim Franklin
    It takes practice to do a recording and sound good all the time, there is a point at which you do have to "live" with the recording that you have and edit it to make it sound the way you want, of course if you have Ums, 357 times in 20 minutes, your going to be spending far too much time editing not to mention that the more you cut, from a recording the less material you have this usually results in jumpy frames, funny sounding audio, and other things we call artifacts.

    So the better you can produce a recording without having to edit, (you have complete control over what comes out of your mouth,) the better off you will be.

    If you find yourself trying to fill in the empty moments with an um, or an ah, or some other useless form of audio, you might want to work with a script, knowing what your going to say in advance, is worth hours of editing...
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      The occasional um or ah is no big deal, same as tripping over a word occasionally. The key is "occasional".

      Same with coughing or clearing your throat. Hard coughs, loud enough to spike the meters, definitely need to come out.

      While we're at it, let's add another buzzkill to the list - waiting for things to load. This is particularly virulent in the "product in 30 minutes" live screen capture videos. The presenter hems and haws while attempting to type in a URL, and we get to watch them backspace 16 times trying to get the address right while talking at the same time. When they finally do, they then try to fill time while a site or program loads. Usually with a combination of ums, ahs and 'like I saids'.

      Just pause the damn video until your next screen is loaded, or load it in another tab or even another browser.

      The bottom line isn't to cut anyone down as a presenter. The bottom line is that you could have the best content the world has ever seen, but if the presentation is so distracting or annoying the content gets lost, that great content is wasted. And that's not fair to the viewer or the presenter.

      Give yourself a fair shake, and clean up your videos...
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      • Profile picture of the author Michael Oksa
        Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

        The occasional um or ah is no big deal, same as tripping over a word occasionally. The key is "occasional".

        Same with coughing or clearing your throat. Hard coughs, loud enough to spike the meters, definitely need to come out.

        While we're at it, let's add another buzzkill to the list - waiting for things to load. This is particularly virulent in the "product in 30 minutes" live screen capture videos. The presenter hems and haws while attempting to type in a URL, and we get to watch them backspace 16 times trying to get the address right while talking at the same time. When they finally do, they then try to fill time while a site or program loads. Usually with a combination of ums, ahs and 'like I saids'.

        Just pause the damn video until your next screen is loaded, or load it in another tab or even another browser.

        The bottom line isn't to cut anyone down as a presenter. The bottom line is that you could have the best content the world has ever seen, but if the presentation is so distracting or annoying the content gets lost, that great content is wasted. And that's not fair to the viewer or the presenter.

        Give yourself a fair shake, and clean up your videos...
        Right on, John!

        I once saw a video where part of the process was opening 20 new tabs in Firefox.

        Yep, you guessed it. The guy doing it explained how to open a new tab, and then opened tab #1, explained it again and opened tab #2. After the 5th tab he quit explaining how, but then kept on opening 1 tab at a time until all 20 were loaded.

        And, of course, every time he opened a new tab his talking would slow way down. I understand that some people have a hard time talking and opening new tabs at the same time, but to watch it 20 times in a row was truly something to behold.

        Not that I'm perfect. I made some videos and had some online friends check them out. They said I paused too often and that I should be more enthusiastic. I didn't get mad; I made some improvements.

        All the best,
        Michael
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  • Profile picture of the author stoltingmediagroup
    Uhms, coughs, and really strong accents (without subtitles). Those 3 things do not belong in a mass marketed product or presentation. Period!

    Oh and one more thing for you "video creating" internet marketers.

    Showing this screen below with a flashing cursor for 10 to 15 minutes while talking about a topic,
    Is a complete insult to both the words "Video" and "Product"!



    Thank you!

    Arnold Stolting.
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  • Profile picture of the author weeburty
    It happens to us all and I do it the same way as Amy in post #3. It's either that you outsource it to someone else
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    I cant believe people are suggesting to leave them in.

    I guess it depends on what youre selling.

    For a $7 audio it might be okay, but not for something higher end.
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  • Profile picture of the author vCr8
    I remember back in high s school when I had a training for public speaking.... We had the 30sec uhmmm test. So basically I had to do an extemporaneous speech trying my best not to say uhmm, so everytime i said "uhmmm" my timer would reset for another 30 sec... This time was gradually increased for up to 2min. So yes, practice it... Prepare a script but be sure to say the words as natural as possible and of course do your recordings in parts.
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  • Profile picture of the author HelpingYouBeAnExpert
    I have sold tons of recordings and most of the time I leave them in. Over the years I think so far I got less then 3 refunds so that is not a problem the key is they can understand what you are teaching and the quality of what you are teaching IMHO

    but if you need them cut out get it outsourced it's probably not very expensive
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  • Profile picture of the author Bruce Wedding
    Wow. I'm amazed at all the people saying to leave them in. I go straight from the recording to editing and just cut out all the ums, the long pauses, etc.

    And as someone posted above, when i screw up during recording, I just take a long pause and start over at the beginning of a sentence. It makes editing easy.

    The only problem I have with Camtasia is, the more you edit, the slower it gets. Sometimes it gets so bad, you have to produce the video and start over with the partially edited one. This is a documented problem with Camtasia and they don't seem interested in fixing it.
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