In talking videos, breaths, thinking pauses and filler sounds stretch the runtime and drag the pace. There are three ways to remove them: by hand, with Premiere's text-based editing, or automatically. Which one fits depends on how long your video is.
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For short videos this is the fastest route and needs no extra tools. First make the audio track taller so silent parts show up as a flat line in the waveform.
To close an empty space on the timeline, click the space and press Delete; for several spaces use Sequence › Close Gap.
In recent versions of Premiere Pro you can transcribe the speech and cut from the text. Open the Text panel with Window › Text and transcribe the sequence in the Transcript tab. Pauses appear as separate marks in the text; filter for pauses and delete them in bulk.
This route works in the languages on Premiere's speech-to-text list. If your language is not on it, use the first or the third way.
Instead of hunting for hundreds of gaps in a long recording, you can hand the job to Sylba's Cut section. Sylba finds silences and filler sounds, shows them to you and never cuts anything without your approval.
For a video of a minute or two, cutting by hand is the fastest. If the speech is in a language on Premiere's list and the recording is short, text-based editing does the job. For talking recordings longer than ten minutes, or when you also want filler sounds gone, automatic cutting saves time.
Before a big cleanup, duplicate the sequence (right-click it in the Project panel › Duplicate). Removing every single breath makes speech sound artificial; leaving a short beat between sentences feels more natural. If the video has music, cut the speech first and place the music afterwards.
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