How You Can Save Time Editing Your Podcast
Joe Casabona [00:00:00]:
I've been learning a lot about how people feel about their podcast process and where they feel they spend the most time. And through a winning combination of asking my email list and talking to people at Podcast Movement, I've learned that many, many podcasters feel they spend too much time editing their podcast. So for today's episode of podcast workflows, it's a little mix of 3 things in podcasting, but also just a regular helpful episode. I'm going to talk about 3 ways that you can improve and speed up your editing process. One of those things won't be a surprise. The rest might. Let's get into it. Alright.
Joe Casabona [00:00:43]:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of podcast workflows. So three things to improve your podcast process. The first one will not surprise you at all. It is hire an editor. Editing is the easiest thing to save time on, which is good news, but the bad news is that you'll have to make a financial investment. I think every podcaster, almost, I'll say 99.9% of them, should hire an editor. There is, for most podcasters, little to no benefit to editing your own show long term.
Joe Casabona [00:01:29]:
I think maybe edit it in the beginning. You have the skill, you'll know how to speak the language, and you'll know what you want from your editor. Right? You'll be able to communicate with them more easily, but hiring an editor will free up so much time. I read a stat that it's, like, for every finished minute, it takes 4 minutes of post production work. So if you do a 30 minute podcast, you're looking at 2 hours of post production work. Imagine what you could do with those 2 hours. You could record 3 other 30 minute episodes. Right? So I think the best thing for most people to do is hire an editor.
Joe Casabona [00:02:24]:
This is a hill I will die on, but I also recognize that I cannot force people to spend money if they don't want to. And I should also say this. There's one more thing that I should mention here. I I recognize that there are people who want to have a podcast and maybe they can't afford to hire an editor, so I wanna make this clear. If you're a student, if you're a hobbyist, if you're just messing around with friends, you know, you you and your friend have you wanna have a phone call every week and catch up and whatever, that's fine. I'm not talking to you. As I mean, especially if you're like a hobbyist or you're just killing time. Like, just recognize that if you're not doing it for the downloads, you're doing it just for fun.
Joe Casabona [00:03:20]:
That's great. I will say that hobbies cost money. I don't know a single hobby that somebody has that's like, no. I don't spend any money on my hobby. Right? I love Lego. I love cigars. I play the drums. If you're into collecting stamps or knives or pens, you're gonna have to spend money in a hobby.
Joe Casabona [00:03:46]:
So if you're a hobbyist, I would I would also maybe just consider where you can invest some money into your hobby. But, again, most people that I am talking to here, the people I'm talking to, the ones you're listening, if you found this on YouTube and you're like, I don't my no podcast should make money, nor should you have to spend any money on a podcast. This is not for you. You can just leave, tell YouTube you don't wanna see content like this anymore. I am talking to people who are who are investing their time and money into a podcast because they see it as a way to support their business, build their authority, or otherwise make money for their show. Right? Otherwise, make money for themselves, I should say. So that's who I'm talking to. Maybe I should have said that at the top of the show.
Joe Casabona [00:04:47]:
If you're just messing around or you wanna learn editing, right? Like, I, you know, I'm I'm qualifying a lot of what I'm saying because, like, if you're trying to learn editing, then, yeah, record your own podcast and edit it. Right? But if you're a solopreneur or a small business owner and you are you have a podcast because you have a message you wanna put out there. You want content you wanna put out there. You wanna establish your authority and develop a deeper relationship with your potential customers, then you shouldn't be editing your podcast. There are a million other things that you should be doing for your podcast and for your business, and so hiring an editor is one of the best things that you can do. Okay. With all that out of the way, what what do you do if you want to save time and you wanna keep editing your show? Now the the nice thing about the next two things I'm about to talk about here is you can do it whether you hire an editor or not. Like, these are just things that will save you time.
Joe Casabona [00:05:54]:
So number 2 is take good notes. This is true whether you have a solo episode or a an interview. Right? If you're, if you're recording a solo episode and you mess up and you wanna keep rolling, clap your hands, write down the time stamp so that you don't have to go looking for that point. Right? Maybe you went on a tangent. Right? Maybe maybe after I finish recording this, I'll feel I went on too much of a tangent about who this episode is not for. And so I will, you know, I can write down the time for that. I'm I this is largely scripted, so I don't feel like I've gone on a tangent. But, you know, during the during the the recording, take good notes for oh, I talked about this at this time stamp.
Joe Casabona [00:06:51]:
This takes some practice. Right? And this is something I've been doing for a long time, so I'm I'm comfortable doing that. Right? And and there are apps that will, like, shore up silence. So if you just wanna, like especially if it's a solo show, just take some time to write it down. There's an app called Recut that will trim silences. I think Descript, which I'll talk about in a minute, you know, gets rid of long silences if you want. There are countless AI. Like, this is, like, a good use of AI.
Joe Casabona [00:07:20]:
Right? Oh, there's 5 seconds of silence. Let's get rid of that. Right? So take good notes. If you are interviewing someone, what I will do is I have our shared Google Doc. I share I send a Google Doc to my guest before we record with the general structure of the conversation so that they can be prepared. This is something else that makes editing easy. The more you prepare on the front end, the less editing you'll have to do on the back end. But I have a Google document, and I'll be taking notes.
Joe Casabona [00:07:53]:
Right? If I go on a tangent, I will write, like, you know, edit Joe Tangent 1345. Right? If my guest goes off topic, edit 14 I almost said 72. 1427 of guest tangent. Right? Or guest talks about dog too much or whatever. Right? So keeping those notes means that you'll be able to find that stuff more quickly. Having a few of the words that they said it'll make it easier to find or that you said it'll be easier to find, especially if you're using Descript or Riverside or whatever. And so you won't have to listen back to the entire episode. And if you have an editor, then you don't have to relisten to the episode to send edit notes.
Joe Casabona [00:08:46]:
Right? You can just say, hey. Around 1427, my guest goes on a tangent about their dog. Can you cut that out? Right? Or with with Riverside, I can actually find the entire quote and and give it to my editor if I want to do that. So I think that's number 2. Take good notes when you're recording. Yes. This is going to take some practice. Yes, if you're recording a solo episode you can have those little extra pauses because there are tools that will just remove those pauses.
Joe Casabona [00:09:22]:
But if you want to be an active listener with a guest then it does take some practice. Also, now that I'm doing more video for my show, I do need to be cognizant that, like, I shouldn't be doing this the entire time when the guest is talking because I we just do have a side by side right now. We're not switching views, so we have a side by side. So if I'm not looking at the camera, it may be misconstrued as me not paying attention when in actuality, I'm writing stuff my guest is saying down. So that's like, I can touch type, but I wanna, you know, I need to practice that a little bit more. So that's something to keep in mind. But by and large, taking good notes while you record will make the editing process easier. And finally, I say use Descript.
Joe Casabona [00:10:17]:
If you're going to edit now, again, another caveat here is I unless they've improved something, I find editing multiple tracks in Descript to be cumbersome. I don't think they do a good job with it. When I was recording in SquadCast for a while, I didn't like the experience but I will give about 40% of that to me being unfamiliar with how to do it. Also, this was a long time ago because, again, I don't really edit, my own stuff. Even videos like this, I will, you know, I'm gonna edit this episode myself to go against everything I just said earlier, but this is largely me talking and I've planned the content and I have a good setup. So I'm gonna throw the audio in Logic Pro, run it through this cleanup I already have, and then put it back into my video editor, which is ScreenFlow. And that's it. Like, the the the editing process, it wouldn't be, you know, I wanna release this episode close to when I'm recording it.
Joe Casabona [00:11:26]:
And so the short amount of time it takes for me to edit is is worth it to have the episode ready today versus 3 days from now. Right? But, anyway, so Descript, if you are going to edit yourself or if you something I'll do sometimes is I'll get the final episode back. It'll be longer in length than I wanted it to be. Right? And I maybe I didn't realize it when I sent it off for edit. Maybe adding the extra, like, the ads and the intro and the outro make it longer than I expected. I really want my episodes to be 35 minutes and I I get close to that. If it's over 40 though, I wanna find some stuff to trim. And so because I've taken really good notes, I will just load the file that my editor sent me into Descript and I will look for, oh, we had a conversation about fountain pens here that didn't apply to what we were talking about.
Joe Casabona [00:12:33]:
And I'll just delete that and export it again. So there you know, if you are if you if you do hire an editor, but you wanna put some finishing touches on an episode, Descript is a really good way to do that, especially because you do have that final file so you don't have to, like, line up additional tracks. But if you're gonna edit yourself then Descript is really good for a lot of reasons. Right? It's it can easily remove long silences, it can remove filler words which I don't think I am more likely to remove repeat words than filler words. I think an here and there is fine. I think if there's, like, 4 ums in a row, then you wanna fix that. Right? But people say, in real life, and if it's not scripted, there's a difference between something feeling scripted and something being too casual and an here or there is fine. I think it's a judgment call.
Joe Casabona [00:13:42]:
If it's too many hums to be distracting, then you wanna edit some of those out. But more or less, you wanna make a good point or or you want it to sound natural, I guess. I that's my point. You want it to sound natural, like they're not reading or or it sounds robotic or something. But Descript is really good for that stuff and then making basic edits. So I will end with a little bit of a a story because I am familiar with editing, and I have a process on my computer for editing, but I also have really good equipment and so I thought that was doing most of the work for me. Something I didn't realize that my editor was doing was cleaning up doing mouth declicking which is, like, I'm not gonna do it because it's gross, but it's like mouth sounds. Right? Hard swallows or, like, lip smacking.
Joe Casabona [00:14:42]:
I can't I can't stand those sounds. I'm told I I'm I'm pretty sensitive to audio, so I don't know. I'm not sensitive, like, it makes me sad. Just I hear things more. And then breaths. Right? Like, I take, you know, I'm I'm taking a lot of breaths. Breathing has replaced the umms and ahs for me. I'll take a pause and I'll breathe.
Joe Casabona [00:15:11]:
And again, some it's like sometimes, like, people breathe. Right? So you don't need to edit out every breath, but also when you're talking to someone in real life, people aren't breathing in your ear. Right? So I like to edit some of those breaths out. I also like to boost the audio a little bit. And so, anyway, I wasn't I thought my Rodecaster Pro 2 and my Shure SM 7 B were enough to just get all of the annoying sounds out. And then I listened to an episode I released just recorded edited for content and released next to an episode that my editor really edited and released, and it sounds so different. So, you know, I think I know, but I have no idea this is the realest. No.
Joe Casabona [00:16:06]:
Just kidding. That's a MTV reference for elder millennials or for, I guess, for non elder millennials who didn't get that reference. But so now I have a process in Logic Pro. But, again, like, my editor does a better job. Right? If you really listen, you could probably tell which ones I edited versus every other episode. Right? And, again, it's usually just solo episodes that I'm recording on, like, a Friday before the episode's supposed to come out, something I'm thinking about or whatever, or these episodes because I'm releasing them on YouTube and I have all of the scenes set up in Ecamm Live, it really is just about removing, like, doing mouth declicking and breath control. And so, like, I took some time. I set that up in Logic Pro, and we're good to go.
Joe Casabona [00:16:59]:
So to recap here, right, hire an editor to at least do most of it. Right? I'm a hypocrite if I if I say I never edit. This one this one I'm going to edit, but I'm also not combining and syncing tracks. I don't have to fix someone else's crappy audio. I don't even really need to edit for content because I have a script and an outline up, and I knew exactly what I was going to talk about. But by and large, like, my editor gets, we'll say, 95% of the episodes that I record across all of my podcasts. For for my local podcast, start local, he gets all of them because there are just varying levels of audio and different equipment, and he is way better than me, and it will take way less time for him. Right? But when I am recording and I control everything, I feel comfortable throwing it into a Logic profile that I already prepared, so that doesn't add much extra time.
Joe Casabona [00:18:21]:
So hire an editor. Whether or not you hire an editor, you should take good notes especially if you do interviews. Right? If you're doing solo episodes, take good notes before you record and it'll keep you on track. But if you have an interview, take good notes during the interview, mark things that you think might need to be edited, when there's overtalking, if the guest says something you think would be a good cold open, stuff like that. And then finally, use Descript. This is this is not sponsored by Descript. I'll have, like, an affiliate link in the description probably. I use Riverside to record because I I think that Riverside is better than SquadCast, which Descript owns.
Joe Casabona [00:19:14]:
But as far as editing, especially basic edits or content based edits, Descript is is where it's at. It's it's really good. I I think, like, Riverside has a built in edit by transcript feature as well, but I don't think it's as good as Descripts, and that's why I'm using both. So use Descript if you're gonna edit yourself. Okay. That's it for this episode of podcast workflows. I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know if you have feedback.
Joe Casabona [00:19:49]:
Leave, you know, and you're listening in Spotify or YouTube. You can leave comments right on the episode. If you're not listening in those places, you can go to podcastworkflows.com/feedback to leave a text or audio note. So, again, that's podcastworkflows.com/feedback. Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, I can't wait to see what you make.
