Feature: Silence skip

[some-git-user]

Pull Request Type

• Bugfix
• Feature Implementation
• Documentation
• Other

Related issue

closes #1766

Description

This PR implements a simple silence skip logic, to dynamically determine silent video parts, related to the individual max volume of the audio source.

Screenshots

2025-10-14.21-02-12.1.mp4

Testing

• Open any video (prefer a podcast with silent or mute parts between conversations).
• Toggle the function via the overflow menu Button.
• Watch/hear the player increasing playback speed to 3x between silent/mute audio parts and decreasing to 1x speed when audio is detected.
• Toggle the function again to deactivate and fallback to default 1x speed

Desktop

• OS: debian
• OS Version: 13
• FreeTube version: v0.23.11 Beta

Additional context

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

Remove all the locale files. Only keep en-us

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

Im a bit confused by this skip rate. Please elaborate why you chose for 2.5x instead of e.g. 10x

Lets say the ending of a certain video is 60sec it will take 24sec to skip the silence. Thats way too long imo.

Why not detect when there is no audio and detect when audio is playing again and instantly skip towards that timestamp instead of relying on playback rate to handle this

[some-git-user]

Im a bit confused by this skip rate. Please elaborate why you chose for 2.5x instead of e.g. 10x

Lets say the ending of a certain video is 60sec it will take 24sec to skip the silence. Thats way too long imo.

Why not detect when there is no audio and detect when audio is playing again and instantly skip towards that timestamp instead of relying on playback rate to handle this
the

The main goal of this feature is to skip (accelerate) silence between conversations, or other silent parts, not to fast forward to the end of a video.
I tried different speed steps with multiple videos and 2.5x was the best one in my tests, since faster steps could also "cut off" the beginning of the next non silent part.

I'm not sure how to "detect when there is no audio and detect when audio is playing again and instantly skip towards that timestamp" .
Maybe I'm wrong here, but to know this you must buffer and analyze the whole video before the playback start, so the code knows the parts with no audio.
I also tried to create a little UI, to let the user make individual changes for every video, to match the needed audio threshold, but I'm not familiar with Vue and the lack of Typescript made it even harder for me to get into this project.

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

This implementation works really well, especially considering that our player is the limiting factor in this case.

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

I would like to be a button for this inside the player instead of outside the player

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

• If i enable this feature my playback rate defaults to 1x and i cant change it

VirtualBoxVM_lekL1aY4w6.mp4

VirtualBoxVM_o0oKzNZISX.mp4

• O and P keyboard shortcuts are used to increase or decrease playback speed but because of the lock to 1x its behaving in weird ways

VirtualBoxVM_46UwulCyhb.mp4

• Discussion point: What should we do about people that are using a playback speed above 3x? I mean if i use 4x to watch a video and silent parts kicks in it probably shouldnt touch the playback speed right?

If i use my left/right arrow keys to skip forward/backward it sometimes skips 2,5x because the skip entered a silence bit. I think thats undesired behavior as it skipped 12,5seconds. The creator wasnt silent for 12,5sec. Context: Arrow Left/Right, Fast-Forward X seconds based on the Fast-Forward Interval and current Video Playback Rate (Ex: 5 seconds Fast-Forward Interval and Video Playback Rate 2x, fast-forwards video 10 seconds)

• Other shortcuts are also affected by this: J and L

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

Umm i think this isnt supposed to happen. It default to 10x now

VirtualBoxVM_g9v0U7dPlB.mp4

Discussion point: What should we do about people that are using a playback speed above 3x? I mean if i use 4x to watch a video and silent parts kicks in it probably shouldnt touch the playback speed right?

I think we probably should implement not touching the playback speed if its above 3x

[some-git-user]

@efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc I used the user setting values for the fast and normal playback speed. I tested multiple values with various videos and it worked fine even with 10x forward speed. So in your case it's at 10x speed because this should also be your "Max Video Playback Rate"?

Do you have problems with speeds above 3x ? I can't unmute in your provided video examples. Are they recorded with sound?

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

@some-git-user

Do you have problems with speeds above 3x ? I can't unmute in your provided video examples. Are they recorded with sound?

The arent recorded with sound but i think this case doesnt apply anymore because of the change you explained

I used the user setting values for the fast and normal playback speed. I tested multiple values with various videos and it worked fine even with 10x forward speed. So in your case it's at 10x speed because this should also be your "Max Video Playback Rate"?

Yes it is 10x. I will reevaluate!