Editing with Cubix3 min readLast updated September 2026

Remove filler words

Instantly detect and excise 'um', 'uh', 'like', 'you know', and repetitive stutters from your video.

What this does

Finds hesitations, stutters and immediately repeated phrases in your speech and cuts them on word boundaries, so the delivery tightens without the edit becoming audible.

Two kinds of filler

Mechanical hesitations — um, uh, er — carry no meaning and can always go. Discourse words like 'like', 'you know' and 'I mean' sometimes do real work in a sentence, and removing all of them can change how you sound. If you use one deliberately, say so and it will be left alone.

How to do it

Follow these step-by-step instructions in Cubix.

1

Open a project with spoken audio

Filler removal reads what was said, so it works on any clip with speech in it.

2

Ask for the cleanup

Filler removal runs alongside silence removal in the same pass, so one request covers both. That is usually what you want — pauses and hesitations are the same problem.

Example Prompt for Cubix AI Agent
"Cut the ums, uhs and stutters along with the dead air."
3

Review what it caught

Cubix reports what it removed. Listen back once: the goal is fluency, not the complete absence of human speech patterns.

4

Name a custom list if you need one

If you have a verbal tic that is specific to you, or a word you use deliberately that keeps getting cut, say so and it will be targeted or spared accordingly.

Example Prompt for Cubix AI Agent
"Also cut every 'basically', but leave 'right' alone — I use it on purpose."
5

Hide the visible joins

On a locked-off camera, each removed word leaves a small jump in the picture. A slight change of scale across the cut, or a cutaway over the busiest section, converts a jolt that reads as a mistake into one that reads as an edit.

Pro Tips for Best Results

  • Restarts are the biggest win, bigger than um and uh combined. When you begin a sentence three times, only the last attempt belongs in the video.
  • If the result sounds oddly inhuman, it is usually missing breath rather than missing words. Ask for more breathing room rather than putting the filler back.
  • Match the intensity to the format: short-form can take everything out, while an interview should keep most of its texture.
  • Generate captions after the cleanup, not before, so they match the edited audio exactly.

Restarts are the largest single source of clutter in unscripted speech — larger than um and uh combined — which is why removing them makes delivery read as fluency you did not actually have.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions around this editing workflow.

Mechanical hesitations — um, uh, er — always. Discourse words like 'like', 'you know' and 'I mean' sometimes carry real structure in a sentence, so removing every instance can change how you sound.

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