How to remove the sound from a video
Strip the sound from a video in Cut by Zaweba: tick remove the sound in the Filters tab and save with a preset for a silent clip, made offline.
Removing the sound is a single tick box in Cut by Zaweba. Open the video, tick remove the sound in the Filters tab, then save through the Convert tab, and the new file has no sound track at all. The original file is left exactly as it was.
The app is free software under the EULA, runs offline on Windows and asks for no account.
Reasons to remove the sound
Plenty of good videos have bad sound. Wind roaring across a phone's microphone, traffic, a television in the background, or a private conversation you'd rather not share. Sometimes the picture is all you need: a clip for a presentation, a loop for a screen in a shop window, footage you'll put music under in another program. A silent file is also slightly smaller, which helps when a size limit is tight.
Muting the clip
Open the video in Cut. Use Open, drag it onto the window, or choose it from recent files.
Play it with Space to check. If only part of it has unwanted sound, you might prefer to keep the sound and cut that part out instead: mark it with I and O and press Delete.
Go to the Filters tab and tick remove the sound.
Then open the Convert tab and choose a preset by purpose. For WhatsApp, For YouTube 1080p, For email (under 25 MB), Small file and Best quality are all there. Cut shows the estimated size and the encoder it will use before you begin. Only the kept parts are converted, in one frame-exact pass, so any trimming and filters you set are saved along with the silence.
Keeping the sound somewhere else
Before you take it off, consider whether you'll want it later. Cut can save the sound of the kept parts on its own as MP3, WAV (16-bit) or FLAC. Saving it first takes a moment and means you have both: a silent video and a separate audio file.
That's also the way round if what you want is the sound rather than the picture, for example a talk recorded on a phone. Extract the sound, and you can leave the video alone.
Before you take the sound off
Check the Details tab for extra tracks. It lists every audio track in the file with its codec, rate, channels, bitrate and language. Some recordings carry more than one, such as a commentary or a second language. Removing the sound takes them all off.
Turn it down instead, if that's enough. The volume control in the same Filters tab can quieten a clip without silencing it, which suits background chatter that adds atmosphere without being distracting. Normalise, for even loudness, sits beside it.
Remember what a lossless cut does. Saving a lossless cut copies the original packets untouched, sound included. To change or remove the sound, save through the Convert tab.
Doing a batch
If a whole folder of clips needs silencing, perhaps footage for a slideshow, tick remove the sound and add all the files from the Batch tab. The current filters are applied to each one, the jobs run in the background with progress bars, and the queue carries on after a restart. Each output is written as a part file and renamed only when complete, so you won't mistake a half-finished file for a finished one.
Where Cut fits
If you plan to add music or a voiceover, a timeline editor such as Video by Zaweba is the place for that, and Cut can hand the open file across with File, then Open in Video by Zaweba, when Video is installed. For simply taking the sound off, Cut by Zaweba is quicker.
