Free tool
Jump cuts: see the pauses in your video
A jump cut is a cut inside one take: a pause or a mistake comes out, and the talking carries straight on. Add a clip to see every pause in it, how much shorter it gets without them, and hear it play tightened.
Example A made-up one-minute clip. Add yours to see your own.
Length now, and with the pauses cut
1:00 now, 0:46 with the pauses cut
10 pauses · 14 seconds of dead air · 23% shorter without them
The 5 longest pauses
- 0:183.0 s
- 0:442.6 s
- 0:582.0 s
- 0:311.6 s
- 0:001.4 s
This page measures the pauses and lets you hear the clip without them. It doesn't save a cut video. A short breath is left around each cut, so no word is clipped.
Free, no sign-up. Your clip is read on this page and stays on your device.
What is a jump cut?
A jump cut is a cut between two moments of the same shot. The camera hasn't moved and you are still in the frame, but a piece of time is missing, so your head or hands seem to jump to a slightly new position. That small jump is where the name comes from.
In talking videos, the missing piece is nearly always a pause, an "um", or a line you said twice. You film one long take, then cut out everything that isn't a good line and push what is left together. Each place two lines meet is a jump cut.
Film editors traditionally avoided jump cuts, because a visible jump reminds the audience that they are watching something edited. Online video turned that around. On YouTube, TikTok, Reels and Shorts a quick jump between lines is so common that most viewers no longer notice it, and a video without pauses simply feels faster.
When jump cuts work, and when they look wrong
Jump cuts work best when you are talking straight to camera and the point is the information: a tip, a review, a story, a tutorial. They keep the pace up, they let you film without a perfect take, and they let you drop a sentence that didn't land.
They look wrong when the jump is bigger than the cut deserves. If you leaned back, looked at your notes, or the light changed between the two lines, the join looks like a glitch. They also work against you in calm or emotional videos, where a pause is part of how the line is meant to feel, and in interviews, where chopping an answer can make it seem like the person was edited unfairly.
There are three usual ways to soften a jump cut. Zoom in slightly on every other line, so each cut looks like a deliberate change of framing rather than a skip. Cover the join with b-roll, a screen recording or a photo, so the voice carries on and nobody sees the jump. Or film with the cut in mind: stay in the same spot, keep your head at the same height, and pause with your mouth closed before each new line, so the two sides of the cut match.
One more habit helps: don't cut every pause. A beat before a punchline, or after a question, gives the viewer time to react. Tight is good. Breathless is tiring.
How to make jump cuts by hand
Every video editor can do this, on a phone or a computer, and the steps are the same. Put your take on the timeline and turn on the view of the sound, usually drawn as a wavy line along the clip. The talking shows as tall shapes and the pauses as flat stretches.
Go to the start of a flat stretch and split the clip there. Go to the end of the flat stretch, just before the next word, and split again. Delete the piece in the middle, and close the gap so the next line follows straight on. Many editors close the gap for you when you delete; in others you drag the rest of the clip back.
Leave a little room on each side of the cut, about a tenth of a second. Words start and end more softly than they look on the screen, and a cut placed right against the sound clips the first or last letter. Then play each join back with your eyes closed. If it sounds like one sentence, the cut is good.
Work from the start of the video to the end, so the part you have already fixed doesn't move while you work. A long take can have dozens of pauses, which is why this is the slowest part of editing a talking video. Some editors can find and remove silent parts for you, and Krafto does it when you ask in plain words. The checker above shows how many cuts you are in for before you start.
Which pauses to cut
A rule of thumb for talking to camera. The faster the video is meant to feel, the shorter the pause you can cut.
| Pause | How it feels | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Under 0.3 seconds | The normal gap between words and phrases. | Leave it. Cutting these makes speech sound chopped. |
| 0.3 to 0.5 seconds | A breath, like a comma. | Cut it in a fast short video. Keep it in a calm one. |
| 0.5 to 1 second | A beat. Viewers start to notice it. | Cut most of them. Keep one before a punchline or after a question. |
| 1 to 2 seconds | Thinking time. The video starts to drag. | Cut it. |
| Over 2 seconds | A stall: you lost your place or checked your notes. | Cut it, and listen to the lines on either side. One of them is often a retake. |
| At the very start or end | Reaching for the record button. | Trim right up to the first word and right after the last. |
How the checker finds a pause
The checker listens to your clip's sound and works out two things: how loud your talking is, and how quiet the room is when you stop. A pause is any stretch that stays close to the room's quiet for at least the length you choose. Because it compares the clip with itself, it works the same on a phone, a clip-on mic or a studio mic.
"Background noise" moves the line between talking and quiet. Pick "Noisy" if there is traffic, a fan or music behind you, so the noise isn't mistaken for speech. Pick "Quiet room" for a clean recording, so soft word endings are kept.
It only hears loudness. It can't tell a thoughtful pause from a dead one, it can't spot an "um" or a repeated line, and music under your voice hides the pauses altogether. Treat the count as a guide to how much tightening a clip needs, then use your ears.
It also works on sound alone. Add a voice-over, a podcast take or any recording to see the silence in it and hear it with the silence skipped.
Questions
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Last checked 6 October 2026
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When you're ready to edit
Rather not cut every pause yourself?
Upload your clips and tell Krafto what you want. It cuts the pauses and retakes, and adds captions.