AI Video Editor Showdown (Short-Form Test): Timebolt vs Descript vs Loom

Last Update: Sept 14, 2025

Watchability is everything in short-form video

When you’re sending a quick message, posting a reel, or sharing a clip, you’ve got only a few seconds to earn attention. If the first 15 seconds of your video stretch to 23 because of pauses, ums, and filler, that’s a 53% increase in runtime.

In this Part One of our AI Video Editor Showdown, we tested TimeBolt, Descript, and Loom on a 93-second raw recording filled with silences and hesitations. The goal: see which tool keeps your message sharp and your audience engaged.

For Part Two (Long-Form Test: TimeBolt vs Descript vs Gling) , we scaled the test to a 60-minute Zoom recording to see how small misses compound into wasted minutes and hours.

The verified results and files are presented below so others can reproduce the test.

FOR CONTEXT, HERE ARE THE PLAYERS

• Descript has raised around $100 million from investors that include OpenAI Startup Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint, and Spark Capital. 

• Loom Acquired by Atlassian for $975 million in 2023.  

• TimeBolt is rapid video communications software, bootstrapped since 2019, no outside funding.

Here are the test results side-by-side. 

Baseline: Raw Video

 - Length: 93 seconds
- Dead air (defined as pauses longer than 0.5 seconds): 75.6 seconds 
- Filler words: 20 

Filler words included common hesitations such as “um,” “yeah,” “so,” “you know,” as well as combinations like “and um” and “oh shit.” These counts were confirmed using Timebolt’s Umcheck analysis tool.

The Script

“You’ve heard the pitch a thousand times.
AI edits your video in minutes.
But here’s the problem with Loom and most so-called AI editors.
They promise to cut the boring parts.
But if it butchers the meaning, it’s worse than doing nothing.
And that’s already annoying.”

Timebolt Results

- Settings: remove silences ≥0.5 seconds, ignore <0.75 seconds, 0.01-second left padding, 0.15-second right padding

- Final video length: approximately 14.9 seconds
- Dead air missed: 0.7 seconds
- Filler words missed: 0

Timebolt removed all identified filler words and nearly all silences, producing an output that closely matched the intended edit.

Descript Results

- Settings: Remove all filler words (with 'Avoid Harsh Cuts' turned off), and remove gaps greater than 0.5 seconds, shortening them to 0.5 seconds.

- Final video length: Approximately 23.2 seconds.

- Dead air missed: Around 3.8 seconds of explicit gaps, with an effective total of approximately 6.9 seconds when including the durations of retained fillers. This is lower than our reported 9 seconds, suggesting our study included internal pauses or used a slightly different threshold.

- Filler words missed: 12 (e.g., "and," "uh," "Yeah," "So," "like," "oh shit"). This is higher than our reported 10, showing incomplete removal despite the aggressive settings.

Descript handles silences reasonably well but retains more fillers than expected, possibly due to its audio detection limits without manual tweaks. The extra length compared to Timebolt comes from these retained elements and short unremoved pauses.

- Settings: Loom offers no fine-tuning options, so we used its defaults: Remove silences (reported 15 seconds removed) and remove fillers (reported 24 removed).

- Final duration: 65 seconds

- Dead air missed: 35 seconds, nearly 1/2 the video

- Fillers words missed: 6 (e.g., "And," "So," "Yeah.," "Oh shit."). Loom reported removing 24, which overcounts the raw 20, likely flagging non-fillers like "and" as repeats.

Loom’s counters seem off: over-removing fillers with false positives while missing significant silence. The retention of "Oh shit" (listed as a filler) suggests Loom’s detection skips custom phrases, focusing only on basics like "um" or "ah."