How do you edit a podcast?
Bring every microphone and camera into one project and line them up. Then cut the conversation for story: remove false starts, long pauses and anything you agreed to drop. Balance the voices and add the intro and outro before you export. For a video podcast, cut between camera angles as you go, then pull short clips from the best moments.
A podcast edit has two jobs: make the conversation easy to follow, and make it pleasant to listen to. Do them in that order. Fixing the sound of a sentence you are about to cut is wasted time.
Step by step
- Gather everything. Each person’s microphone and the intro and outro music. Add the cameras if it is a video podcast.
- Line it up. If the microphones and cameras were recorded separately, sync them by their sound before you cut.
- Listen once without cutting. Note where the conversation drags and where the best moments are. A transcript makes this far quicker, because you can read an hour in minutes.
- Cut for story. Take out false starts, long pauses, off-topic stretches and anything you agreed to drop. Keep some natural pauses, or it stops sounding like people talking.
- Choose angles (video only). Switch to whoever is speaking, and use the wide shot for laughter and crosstalk.
- Mix. Bring each voice to a similar level and add gentle fades at the edits. Then set the music under the intro and outro. Listen once on headphones and once on ordinary speakers.
- Export. One file for audio platforms, and one for video if you film it.
- Pull clips. Find the strongest moments and make short vertical versions for social.
Can you edit a podcast with free software?
Yes. You need something that can hold several tracks of sound, cut them together, and balance their levels. For a video podcast, add multicam, so you can switch between cameras. Plenty of free editors do all of that. Check whether the free plan expires and whether it puts a watermark on what you export.
How long it takes
A tidy edit of an hour-long conversation usually takes a few hours. The first episodes take longer. Saving your voice settings and your intro and outro so each episode starts from the same place is what brings the time down.
How B/side handles it
B/side runs as an app on your Mac or PC, or in Chrome. The Free plan never expires. Drop in the cameras and the sound recorder and group them, and every angle lines up by its sound. Cut live from a grid of every angle, then switch any angle afterwards.
The mixer has a fader and live meters on every track, and track presets keep your voice settings from one episode to the next. On a paid plan, transcribe any clip to find moments by reading, with hours included each month and $0.60 an hour of footage after that. When the episode is done, Make a Vertical Version gives you a tall cut for shorts, on every plan.
When something else is better
If the show is audio only and you never film it, a dedicated audio editor is the more natural tool. It is built around waveforms and sound repair rather than pictures.
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