Performance Muting: Control the Rhythm of Your Edit

Most of the time when visual dubbing is used in AI-assisted editing, you’re changing or adding dialogue. Sometimes, though, you need a pause, a beat, a breath – something that helps the moment land and the story tighten.

That’s where performance muting comes in.

With visual dubbing, you can remove dialogue, add silence or pauses, and give a scene the dramatic beats it needs – without cutting away or sacrificing the shot.

What Actually Is Performance Muting?

Performance muting is a key technique of visual dubbing technology. It lets you mute an actor – while they remain on screen. You remove unneeded dialogue, without introducing lip flap.

Everything else about the actor’s performance – for example, body language and movement – and the shot stays intact. 

A well-placed pause can heighten tension, deepen emotion, or land a joke. But traditionally, editors have only been able to control timing through cuts, not through the performance itself.

When an actor doesn't pause where the story needs them to, your options have been limited:

• Cut to another angle to create space
• Accept the timing as-is, even if it weakens the scene
• Restructure the entire edit to force a gap
• Lose the impact of a continuous shot

These workarounds interrupt flow and introduce pacing compromises that can weaken what might otherwise be a perfect take.

How Performance Muting Works

With performance muting, all you need is a new audio recording with the same duration as the original shot, with audio stripped out where you need your actor muted.

1. Remove dialogue from the audio 

Edit the audio of your original shot to remove unwanted dialogue, for example, using Avid or other non-linear editor (NLE). 

2. Create a draft visual dub (vub)

Upload your new audio recording and original shot together in DeepEditor – either in the web app or via the Avid plugin. 

DeepEditor combines the two pieces of media together into a new shot: a vub.

Because DeepEditor is assistive AI, not generative, every output from DeepEditor is fully controllable after creation. If needed, you have the option to use the DeepEditor refinement tool to make tweaks to the vub. 

It’s also critical you get consent from the actor once your vub is created via the Artistic Rights Treasury (A.R.T.) to be compliant with guilds and unions. 

3. Place your vub in your timeline

Insert your DeepEditor vub into your timeline in Avid or other NLE, and continue your edit!

The result:

• Perfectly timed pauses without cutting away
• Stronger dramatic beats and emotional precision
• Control over rhythm and pacing that was previously impossible
• The performance delivers the moment exactly as you envisioned it

The Benefits of Performance Muting with Assistive AI

The biggest practical benefit of performance muting is that you avoid having to reshoot – which can be practically impossible when the sets are struck and cast has moved on.

Performance muting also means your edit serves your story better. This takes the form of solving a handful of specific editorial challenges:

• Create dramatic tension: A character receives devastating news and you need them to process it silently before responding. The actor delivered the lines too quickly on set, but now you can insert that crucial beat of silence.
• Land beats: Timing is everything in comedy. A joke needs a pause before the punchline, or a reaction needs space to breathe. You can add that pause without cutting to another angle.
• Improve scene rhythm: Sometimes dialogue just feels rushed. You need breathing room between thoughts, between emotional shifts, between story beats. Now you can create that space while staying in the same shot.
• Shape emotional arcs: An actor moves through emotions too quickly for the audience to connect. By adding pauses at key moments, you give the performance – and the audience – time to feel the weight of what's happening.

Performance Muting Is One Technique of Many

DeepEditor offers several powerful use cases for film and TV production, each designed to solve specific post-production challenges:

• Visual ADR: Change or replace dialogue seamlessly
• Performance transfer: Move performances between takes
• Censorship edits: Modify content for different markets and ratings

Performance muting addresses the timing and pacing challenges that have traditionally been solved only through editorial structure. But the underlying technology – frame-by-frame facial performance control – makes all of these applications possible.