TL;DR use --edit audio:threshold=NUM instead.
--silent-threshold has been with us since the literal
first day of auto-editor’s existence. However, it’s continued usage
has become problematic. It’s finally time to put this aging option to
rest.
Every threshold controls what is considered silent and loud, yet
--silent-threshold only controls audio threshold. This used
to make sense when auto-editor used to only have one way of
automatically editing files. But now, it’s not so obvious that it still
only controls audio threshold, or really, that
--silent-threshold only controls the default value of the
threshold attribute of --edit, which leads us
to…
--edit’s Syntax Is So Much NicerWith --edit’s syntax, you can edit multiple tracks with
different thresholds, something never possible with the
--silent-threshold.
auto-editor multi-track.mov --edit 'audio:stream=0,threshold=0.04 or audio:stream=1,threshold=0.09'It’s also much clearer how threshold impacts the editing process
while --silent-threshold is much more opaque on how it
exactly works and how it interacts with --edit. Why bother
explaining how --silent-threshold interacts with
--edit to every user when --edit is better in
every way?
--silent-threshold and it’s alias -t is
used surprising little in scripts. I look at GitHub’s
Dependency Graph and watch various YouTube videos showcasing
auto-editor to gauge how options are used in the real world, and in all
usages I can find, it’s never mentioned at all. This might be both that
4% is a very good default that doesn’t need changing and/or
how audio threshold works is unintuitive, which is why it is never
explained or used. Whatever the case, this lack of usage means
--silent-threshold can be removed without causing
annoyance.
When I removed --export-to-premiere and
--export-to-final-cut-pro options, I used a ‘macro’ that
essentially silently treats '--export-to-premiere' like
'--export premiere' and this allowed users to write the
option in the “old style”, blissfully unaware of any changes, even when
the option and it’s help text technically doesn’t exist anymore. The
reason why I didn’t use a similar strategy for
--silent-threshold is that any script makers who feel the
need to change silent threshold, are the people most who would benefit
from the flexibility of --edit.