Contents
What is Podcasting?
How to Listen to Podcasts
How to Build a Podcasting Studio
How to Plan a Podcast
How to Record a Podcast
How to Edit Your Podcast
How to Publish Your Podcast
How to Promote Your Podcast
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How to Edit Your Podcast
Editing your podcast is the process of fine-tuning and arranging the sound files that make up the raw material of your podcast. What you do in the editing phase depends on whether you recorded your podcast in segments or in one take.
- If you recorded your podcast in segments: In the editing stage, you’ll combine those segments to create a complete episode.
- If you recorded your entire podcast in one take: In the editing stage, you’ll clean up the sound and/or add effects, such as fade-ins and fade-outs.
How to Import Tracks
Audio recordings can have multiple tracks, each of which contains the recorded sounds of a specific part of the overall audio recording. For instance, when bands record albums, each instrument is recorded onto a different track. The tracks then get mixed down into one audio file. If you recorded your podcast all at once, your recording likely has just one track. If you recorded your podcast in a number of different segments, each segment will be a different track that you have to bring into one window to edit into one track.
To do this, open a new editing window. Next, import each of the files (tracks) that you recorded for your podcast into that new window. In Audacity, you can import files by going to the Project menu and then selecting Import Audio. On some audio recording programs, you can simply drag and drop files directly into the editing window.
How to Edit Tracks
Most podcasters edit individual tracks to remove verbal stumbles or dead air, periods of silence that can make a podcast sound dull. To do this, listen and look at the track, noting at which points in the visual representation of the track the dead air occurs. The following example shows what a track looks like before and after the highlighted portion is deleted. (To delete a portion of a track, highlight it and press the Delete key.) You can also rearrange the parts of a track by highlighting an area of a track and then cutting and pasting it to another point in the track.
How to Add Effects to Podcasts
In addition to splicing and rearranging your tracks, audio editing software allows you
to add effects such as reverb, fade-ins, and fade-outs to your tracks. To apply an effect
in Audacity:
- Highlight the section of the track to which you want to apply the effect.
- Click on Effect in the menu bar. A drop-down menu of effects will appear. Select the one you want to apply.
For instance, if you want to fade out the volume at the end of a segment, you would highlight the end of that segment and select Fade Out.
How to Mix Tracks Together
After you’ve edited each track, you can use your editing software to mix tracks together. You can manipulate two or more tracks at a time and organize tracks in two ways:
- Sequentially: You can line up tracks so that one track picks up where another ends. For instance, if you have two segments that follow one after another, you would edit them so that they fit together in this way.
- In parallel: You can arrange for the two tracks play simultaneously. For instance, if you wanted to have a voice speaking over background music, you would set up the music track and voice track so that they play at the same time.
You can move tracks to line them up as you wish by dragging them to the left or right.
Editing Sound
As you line up the tracks, you can listen to the way they fit together by hitting the Play button on the editing software. When you play tracks, listen for the following:
- Sequential tracks: Pay attention to how well the two tracks fit together and eliminate odd pauses or jumps. Also listen to the sound levels on each track and do your best to make them similar so that there’s no sudden jump in volume. This is called normalizing the levels.
- Parallel tracks: Make sure that the featured track is fully audible over the background track. Normalize the sound between any two tracks that you want to feature equally.
Filtering Tracks
In addition to editing your tracks and deleting mistakes or unwanted noises, you can also filter the sound of your podcast. For instance, many sound recorders include equalizers, which you can use to set new levels for treble, bass, and midrange sounds, and noise filters, which analyze a track and remove all sounds except the loudest sound, which is presumably the voice you intend to feature.
How to Save Your Podcast
When you’ve finished editing your podcast, save it as an mp3 file—you may have to select Export as mp3 or click a Publish button in order to do this. When you save the file, give it a name that will help you organize it among your other podcasts. For instance, you could save it as podcastname_year-month-day_episodenumber.mp3.
ID3 Tags
During the saving process, your editing software will likely ask you to provide ID3 tags, which include the name, episode number, description, and date of your MP3 file. When you eventually upload your podcast to an RSS feed, the information you enter as ID3 tags will appear in the podcast directories and podcatchers.
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