FFmpeg 7.1
Since* 0.10
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Detect silence in an audio stream.

This filter logs a message when it detects that the input audio volume is less or equal to a noise tolerance value for a duration greater or equal to the minimum detected noise duration.

The printed times and duration are expressed in seconds. The lavfi.silence_start or lavfi.silence_start.X metadata key is set on the first frame whose timestamp equals or exceeds the detection duration and it contains the timestamp of the first frame of the silence.

The lavfi.silence_duration or lavfi.silence_duration.X and lavfi.silence_end or lavfi.silence_end.X metadata keys are set on the first frame after the silence. If mono is enabled, and each channel is evaluated separately, the .X suffixed keys are used, and X corresponds to the channel number.

The filter accepts the following options:

noise, n

Set noise tolerance. Can be specified in dB (in case "dB" is appended to the specified value) or amplitude ratio. Default is -60dB, or 0.001.

duration, d

Set silence duration until notification (default is 2 seconds). See the Time duration section in the ffmpeg-utils(1) manual for the accepted syntax.

mono, m

Process each channel separately, instead of combined. By default is disabled.

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Examples

  • Detect 5 seconds of silence with -50dB noise tolerance:

    silencedetect=n=-50dB:d=5
  • Complete example with ffmpeg to detect silence with 0.0001 noise tolerance in silence.mp3:

    ffmpeg -i silence.mp3 -af silencedetect=noise=0.0001 -f null -