Lessons

Lesson Info

Podcast Editing

Okay now we're talking about editing your first podcast episode. So exciting at this stage, you should be, you have your microphone, you've recorded your first episode. So you're now at the third part of the core five when it comes to technology and equipment for podcasting, editing your episode. I am a Mac user. But if you are a pc user, the same demo that we're going to show you today applies and I'll also show you a third option. So today's demo is going to be done in garageband, which is a free program you can download on the Apple app store for your Mac computer. Again, if you have a pc, you'll want to download Audacity, which is also free. So again, this is another part in the process where you don't have to spend any money, which is awesome and you can still have a super high quality piece of audio file that you can then host and distribute it everywhere, podcasts are found, but that will come in the next couple of steps. So what we're gonna do now is actually build a template. ...

Having a template is going to be so helpful for you if you decide to edit all of your episodes forever on your own, of course, if you decide this is a piece in the process, you absolutely hate. I know lots of podcasters who have outsourced this if you're interested in what you can expect from pricing, it's typically between 30 to $40. Canadian for a 40 minute audio file and for that price, you're looking at someone who's going to add your jingle to it, adding some sound effects as well as edit out maybe some of the items or awkward pauses or if you can be very specific about pieces of the audio file you want removed. So that's what you can expect to pay if you're really not interested in this part of the process. So what you're seeing here on my screen is I have my garage band program open and on the left you'll see a few different sections. One is the actual interview next would be my intro audio followed by the jingle music and then I even have a little tab for sound effects. So again, depending on how fancy you want to get and how much time you want to spend in the production side, it's very easy to add fun sound effects to really just transition from one point of your interview to another. Which is what I do. You'll remember these sections from the podcast skeleton and this is going to be really helpful to build a template this for you. So I have labeled this template 2018. This is actually from last year but I still use it and what it has already pre populated for me is yes, it has all of these different sections already but I already have my intro jingle with that music already ready to go. So every time I go to record and edit an episode, I open this up and at least that part's already done it sounds the same for every single episode and I don't have to worry about rerecording that or pulling that file in or ever losing that file, you just have to make sure you don't save the template as your new file, which I've definitely done before. So if I was just doing a solo podcast episode or perhaps I'm recording the intro to the episode after my interviews, sometimes I'll come on and I'll record an intro what people can expect from this episode. So that's just me and my mic and when you're just recording with you, I would really recommend to just record right into either your mobile device or your laptop. I think when you any time you use the internet to record there's less control over the quality, there's going to be connectivity issues you could run into. So for something like this you just want to record right natively into your actual device. So in that case what I would do is I would come up here and I would make sure see on the left have now clicked the interview tab. So I'm now recording in this like plain and we'll also mute all of the other ones so that those don't sound as I'm recording. So I click here and I would just hit this record button right here in garageband and it's now recording, I have my Yeti mic connected so you can see that when I get closer to it and talk louder, the wave bars are getting higher. But when I talk back here it gets a lot smaller so you can really in real time see how loud you're talking and if anything needs to be adjusted, this is how you would record natively right into garageband. I'll stop that. But then for the actual interview, especially if you're doing a remote interview, you might have used that tool. I recommended zen caster so I'll just show you what that looks like. I'm now in my zen caster dashboard, you can see all of the different recordings I've ever recorded. They're all stored in the cloud for me for free, which is amazing and I never have to worry about losing anything or something happening to my computer. I can always come back to zen caster and get those old files. So the latest interview, you can see this one, Mandy ace, there's no um size beside it because that's actually an interview I have scheduled for later this week. So you should check out that episode if you're watching this online course, I'm sure it'll be live with mandy, but one that's already been done is you can see digital nomad girl. So I recorded that on June 19 and if I click on it, it'll open up and you'll see two solo tracks. So it's recorded a track from my side of the audio, I'll go ahead and download that and it's also recorded Louise's digital Nomad girls. So we each have separate audio tracks, which is so helpful in case something happens on one end and you can just mute it while the other person is talking and you don't have to worry about it ruining both files. So I've downloaded those both into like onto my computer and it's as simple as just dragging them right into your garage band. So I'll drag it right now and I'll put one on one plane and I'm going to do the same with the other one. But you'll notice that I have to make sure that I have the other plane selected. So while this is loading, just a reminder that you see interview here on the left is clicked on. I'm now going to make sure that I click on inter audio for the next one. Okay, So I've put them both into my garage band now and you'll see that I've timed them up to be exactly on top of each other. That's going to be important, right? Because you want the audio to be talking at the exact same time, it was meant to as if the file was just one. So you're matching them up perfectly And then what you're seeing here with this bar, you'll notice the time at the top is increasing. That's just showing you where exactly you are in the interview. So if I'm up here, I can see that this is two minutes and 30 seconds into this audio file that I've created. So I'm just gonna try playing it to see where in the audio file we're at and I'm just using my space bar here to pause and play. Okay, in three, do you want me to call you Louise or a digital nomad girl? You can call me Louise. Louise and we'll refer to it. Please welcome to the freedom lifestyle part 321. Okay, so what I've done now is I essentially want to cut out all of that noise at the beginning where I'm confirming her name and confirming all that stuff. So I'm gonna pause it exactly when the interview starts, where I wanted to Okay 321. So I paused it there. As you can see the entire line is covering all the planes and what I'm gonna do is I'm going to highlight them both. Okay, so now I'm highlighting the whole thing and I'm just gonna hit command T. And all command T is going to do is just going to cut exactly where we were and split that audio file. So now you have it in two separate sections as well as the one at the bottom. Well, we don't need these so we can just highlight them and just delete them. So now what we have is Louise welcome to the Freedom lifestyle podcast. High. Thanks so much for coming on. So it does start exactly where I wanted to start. However, there was a bit of that awkward point where she kind of delays in saying anything after she says hi, so I'm going to get rid of that too because I don't like that. So I make sure both are highlighted. Hi and I just thought that pauses a bit long, so again I'm gonna go command T and this time I'm just going to drag it, drag them both up a little bit rather than going through the process of deleting and now let's try again podcast High. Thanks so much for coming. I couldn't probably even make it a bit shorter so I'm gonna drag it a tiny more second again. Hi, thanks so much for coming on the show. I'm so glad to be asked. It was so cool. I've been following along on your instagram and if, so that's really how you're trimming out different sections of the audio file that you don't want any awkward pauses, if you mess something up and you need to restart a question or if someone says something that they regret saying, you can easily just trim that out with command T and you can just merge the files back together and get rid of them just like that. Now, the next important thing you want to know is that we can't just have a bunch of individual audio files like this, it's gonna get really annoying to move things around. So after you chop something out, you want to merge the files back together. So we're gonna have to do it for them each plane together. So in this case I'm just going command J and really, that's just merging them and it's going to put it back into one audio file. And what that's going to allow us to do is just drag and drop that audio file, however we need it. You know, we're not sure how long are into at the beginning is gonna be. So we want to leave some space and then be able to move that entire file over for us when we're ready to go. So that's the process of essentially importing a file from a an external recording software versus actually just recording right inside. That's how you chop the audio file and trim it and then merge things together. So the next thing you're gonna want to think about is your jingle, which is going to be, we talked about that opening kind of fun song, audio and music to let people know that it's the start of your show. So this is the Youtube audio library, which has a ton of different free music and sound effects that you don't have to pay for, that you can use for commercial purposes. Some of them you do have to attribute the author in the show notes of your podcast, others you're just free to use, which is really amazing. So I actually found the music for my jingle in here as well as the sound effects throughout my show. So if there's anything you like, you would just download and import it into garageband or whatever you're editing tool is just like I just showed you. So the other thing that you really need to know when it comes to editing is regarding volume and sound. So whether someone is talking too loud or talking to quiet, you might need to adjust their volume. That's what this yellow bar here you're seeing is. So let's say, digital Nomad girls spoke a lot louder than me, I would just bring her volume down. Whereas mine would stay up a lot higher school. I've been following along on your instagram and everything you've got going on and I am a major podcast addict. So I want to, what's also really helpful for this is that you can fade music in and out. So for example, for your jingle, when you're creating it for the first time, it's unlikely that you're going to find a piece of music that's the exact length of your audio file that you're going to be talking over and what you're going to be scripting. So you want to just use this yellow bar here to have the music fade in and out. So what that's allowing it to do is the music is going to increase slowly. Let's make it more dramatic. So you can really see what that's like. Welcome to the freedom lifestyle podcast series a series. So all you're seeing there is my audio file has been on top of the music. I've had it fade in and I also have it fade out at the end so that it sounds like it's fading out. The Freedom lifestyle looks different for everyone. What's your free and there you go. Those are the main things you need to know when editing your first episode to download. You simply go share, export song to disk and it's going to create an mp three or mp four file, whatever you're looking for, minor, always mp three's rate to your computer and that's what you'll actually uploaded to your hosting provider. So more on that next.