📑Remove repetition

❓ What is it?

Certain types of video tend to have a lot of repetition in the raw footage (e.g., single speaker setup where they are recording a script, doing multiple "takes" of certain phrases).

Remove repetition detects when the speaker is repeating phrases in the video, and allows you to select one "take" to keep while deleting the others.

🤔 How does it work?

Remove repetition in FireCut:

• Analyses the words being spoken in the selected portion of your sequence to detect when phrases are being repeated

• For each phrase that is being repeated, shows you a list of all sections where you have a "take" of that phrase -- the words might vary slightly between these "takes", so FireCut does its best to pick up approximate matches as well as exact matches

• Lets you preview each "take" by clicking on it

• Once you know which "take" you want to keep (this usually tends to be the last one in each set, as the speaker will probably keep going until they think they've recorded a good "take"), you can select it with the tick button -- this deletes all the other "takes" in that set

• Keep going through the phrases until you've selected your favourite "take" for each

⚙️ Settings

There are 3 main settings for chapter detection:

1. Mode:

   • Basic mode is a "done for you" solution that uses the optimal sensitivity to use when finding repetition

   • Advanced mode (default) lets you investigate your transcript and customise repetition detection settings, such as tolerance and search radius

2. Scope: You can decide whether to run the operation on your Full sequence or only on a certain portion that you specify with In / Out points (you can place these in your sequence using the I and O hotkeys)

3. Language: We are constantly adding support for new languages. However, please note this is experimental and may create unpredictable results when compared with English. This is the case for every AI tool even if they don't mention it, because training sets for AI tend to be in English. On occasion, this might cause the operation to fail -- please do let us know ([e-mail]) if this happens, so we can improve it for you!

⚒️ Advanced mode

If you choose advanced mode, you get 4 further settings to fine-tune detection of repeated phrases:

• Minimum phrase size: The minimum number of words that have to be repeated in order to be detected as a "match"

• Tolerance: How loose of a match will be detected as a repetition.

  • 0% means only exact matches will be detected

  • 80% means even loose repetitions will be detected (this might catch some "false positives", i.e. phrases that were only slightly similar)

• Search radius: How far away to look for a match. If you increase this, FireCut will look for repetitions even far away from your initial phrase.

• Extend last occurrence of each phrase: How FireCut should determine where exactly the last occurrence ends. Let's say we found 3 repetitions of a phrase. We know that the first 2 occurrences of the phrase end whenever the next occurrence starts. However, there's no fixed ending point like this for the last occurrence. This settings lets you customise how to define that ending point:

  • Extend to end of sentence: This will define the next fullstop/period as the ending point

  • Use the length of the longest occurrence: This will use the longest occurrence so far, and make the assumption that the last occurrence is of that length as well. This is unlikely to be 100% exact, but you might prefer this behaviour if you know the phrases are similar lengths and don't necessarily end in a fullstop.

  • Use phrase size: This uses your predefined "minimum phrase size" setting above

💡 Tips for best outcomes

Because this feature's use case is to remove repeated takes, it will detect repetition only when it is consecutive (i.e., the speaker has done a few takes right next to each other). If you do a second take 5 minutes after the first one, and there are other things being discussed in between, FireCut won't mark these.

• Before selecting your favourite take, make sure FireCut has marked the start and end of that take exactly as you want it (by clicking on the take in the list, which will mark it on your timeline)

• After completing the process, do a double-check to ensure your take has the right start and end points -- occasionally, FireCut might chop off starts / ends of words

• Make sure your audio is loud and clear, with any music / sound effects muted

• Try it on a short section of your timeline first to get familiar with the tool; processing larger sequences can take a while

• Don't work in the timeline while FireCut is working in the background

🙋‍♂️ Common questions, issues, watch-outs

• "It didn't detect all the repetitions" --> Make sure you have a clear speaker in the audio so that your script can be picked up and analysed. If there are any sound effects, multiple speakers, music, noise, etc., this can throw off the analysis in some occasions

• "It didn't work on my non-English video" --> Please drop a note at [e-mail]. We are keen to make sure this feature works reliably on all supported languages!