I'm a huge proponent of cutting out awkward mouth noises because personally I hate ASMR and I hate mouth noises and I hate the sound of whispering and oh my gosh, I just got the heebie jeebies thinking about the mouth noises, Zach. No, don't do this. I'm leaving. Thank you for answering questions. So nice microphone there and it's good. Good for ASMR we're gonna keep that in right Dylan.
Dylan Schmidt:This is the show for creative entrepreneurs who have a message to share and want to live a life of freedom. Learn how to grow your network and net worth. Hear from exciting guests and more. My name is Dylan Schmidt and Welcome to Digital Podcaster. Welcome to the podcast Zack the podcast man, Zack, do you mind sharing briefly how you help people with your podcast?
Zack David:Hey, Dylan, thank you very much. So the podcast man was officially born in April ish 2020. As a musician, my gigs kind of went out the window when the pandemic started, which was unfortunate, but I had already been editing podcasts for like over five years at that point. And I said, I'm gonna make this into a full on podcast agency. So in addition to editing podcasts, what we do at the podcast man is we also launch podcasts, help with the show notes help with the transcriptions and analytics recommendations, and a bunch of other amazing stuff just to make sure that your podcast is up and running, looking beautiful on over 50 directories, including all the big ones sounding good, looking good, full on support, helping you with everything I can.
Dylan Schmidt:So I'm excited to dive in here. So let's start with the first question here. What does the typical post production process look like for podcasts,
Zack David:the typical post production is going to depend a lot on the pre production if you are speaking into a nice microphone, using it correctly, such as Dylan or myself recording correctly, choosing the correct mic input having everybody wear headphones of some sort for long distance recordings, doing all the things right in pre production is going to help a lot with cutting down on the post production time and how effective the post production is. So on my end, at least a lot of it is also going to depend on having a very nice project management system in place. And even if you're doing this on your own, you're still going to want to have a project management kind of platform in place like Asana or Trello or something. But if you're working with a team, you absolutely need something my clients and I and my team use clickup which is just fantastic for keeping everything organized. Each episode has its own task inside there. So Organization is key, and I will receive the raw audio or if you're DIY in it, you'll have your raw audio from the episode, ideally one track per participant. So make sure that your settings are correct inside zoom, Riverside squad, cast, stream yard, whatever you're using for your long distance recording and the post production itself. So you load those bad boys into your DAW digital audio workspace or workstation. Which one is it Dylan I always forget,
Dylan Schmidt:today. Let's go with workstation. It sounds really official.
Zack David:It sounds it sounds cooler than workspace. So we're gonna go with that one. And from there, you just put your knowledge to work and the software that's going to help you so you're going to need to make sure that you kind of process each track separately, that's at least my first step. So I load them all in and I'm doing a visual processing so I see where the audio overlaps, which means people are speaking over each other or there's some background noise going on on one track that you're going to want to get rid of. So that's the beauty of having separate tracks. You know if if Dylan's doggy starts barking over there, you know, no problem cuz if I'm talking and his dogs barking over there, he can chop that out. Now if he's talking and his dogs barking at the same time, then there's not too much we can do but
Dylan Schmidt:what if I'm barking and my dogs talking? Well,
Zack David:then it's gonna be the best podcast episode ever. I will be looking forward to seeing that. So we check out the separate tracks. And this is also nice like I had a client send me one the other day where I mean this wasn't nice, but the guests fire alarm was going off like pretty much the whole time like in a neighboring unit or something. So what I could do on her specific track that guest track is pinpoint that frequency of the fire alarm, which is really nice. Being that a fire alarm is just one frequency and just make a huge cut in that frequency. So get rid of that specific fire alarm sound. Then we're going to after we kind of optimize the separate tracks, we're going to bounce them together, so export them together. At that point I level them out too. So then I do all the processing before I edit Not everybody does it this way, but I like it this way. So I know exactly what I'm editing is exactly what it's going to sound like at the end after I edit. Whereas if I do some mastering or leveling after I edit through and listen through, I'm not going to listen through again. So I may not know if like because sometimes the automated robots kind of you know, they don't do as good of a job as you'd like. I like to actually hear exactly how it's going to sound at the end. So after everything's optimized that way, the separate tracks are bounced together and optimized, the level is set correctly through the off phonic leveler, there's a bunch of normalization software you can use, then it's the actual editing, listening through the entire episode, there's a bunch of different software you can use if a guest has a lot of mouth noises. If the guest has a very echoey or reverb II room, there's a lot you can do in post production. But the better you can get it sounding before recording, the better off you're going to be. So you got to edit through everything export, make sure that the metadata is assigned, which pretty much all of the hosts are going to do that for you nowadays, anyway. But yeah, there's a little more to it, as you can imagine. But that's pretty much it in a nutshell, there's a lot
Dylan Schmidt:that goes into it to make it sound professional. I know a lot of people just go natural and raw. And they're like, it's meant to be a certain way, they just don't make any edits. But I've seen firsthand that a lot of those just go on too much. And it doesn't take the listener into consideration. Sometimes it's crazy to think that Digital Podcaster is already on its way to cross over 15,000 followers on Tiktok and Instagram, I try my best to post engaging short form content there that gives you bite sized tips so that you can incorporate things in your show and provide a better listening experience for your audience. Just go to tick tock or Instagram and search Digital Podcaster. And I will see you there. What should someone know about podcasting? What's one thing you'd like someone to know about podcast editing?
Zack David:This is an awesome question because I can keep rambling about what I was going on in the last one. And I really liked what you said there Dylan, where we have to first and foremost with our podcasts as entrepreneurs, we have to keep the listener in mind the ideal listener, the type of listener that is going to turn into a lead, right, you know, with the editing, we have to just keep in mind the optimization because if you have people with two completely different voices are going to have to be leveled out correctly equalized correctly, the levels are going to have to be correct. So with the actual editing, listening through, I think some very important points here are going to be that perfection is not the way to go for a couple different reasons. One of the reasons is kind of like your return on investment of time, a half hour episode could easily take you three hours or more to edit. If you're sitting there chopping out every arm and every breath and every you know, that's not the way to go. Because the other issue with that is that it's not going to sound natural in. So you're going to be spending three or four hours editing this half hour episode. And then it's not going to sound natural, it's going to sound like some robots speaking at each other. So with editing, now I'm actually speaking about the exact editing part because before with the post production a lot, we were speaking a lot about the optimization, but the editing itself, keeping it natural. And keeping some of those pauses in because a pause can actually speak a lot more than the words themselves, right? I have some clients where they have very intimate conversations. And if I were editing those, like YouTube style, oh man, like some of these YouTube videos I watched these days you almost can get anxiety by the end of the time you're done watching it because they're just chopped up like Jackie Chan chop and you know,
Dylan Schmidt:watching Mr. B's videos, I'm like, I lost about a couple minutes, not even a couple of minutes. I'm like, This is too much for me. It's like having a cups of coffee. There's no dead air. It's just too chopped up. And I know a lot of people will go, oh, well, I use the script. And then they'll remove the filler words and reduce the word gaps. So it's just seamless through I love that tool for social media. But not for podcasts and long form content because that is jarring.
Zack David:Yeah, I think with any of these automated kind of software, just be careful to not overdo it with anything. You know, if you if you cut down the dead air to zero seconds, then yeah, it's not going to sound like a natural conversation, you know, so you're going to want to keep it natural, but also, I'm a huge proponent of cutting out awkward mouth noises because personally I hate ASMR and I hate mouth noises and I hate the sound of whispering and oh my gosh so when I'm editing I oh geez, I can't stand that so I don't know what else to say. But I just got the heebie jeebies thinking about the mouth noises Zach Oh, no, don't do this. I'm leaving. Thank you for answering that question. So nice microphone there, and there's good good for ASMR. We're gonna keep that silence and right.
Dylan Schmidt:We have to it makes it extra strange, which is probably part of my brand.
Zack David:We attract, we attract the types of clients that we want. So we're natural, we're having a good time, but we also know how to get it done.
Dylan Schmidt:That's the truth. So great points about what someone needs to know about podcast editing, and what the process looks like after the audio is recorded. Podcasting is one of those things that it's easy to underestimate how much goes into it, because sometimes just setting up the podcast can be draining in itself, because you're like, oh, this room is too noisy. Oh, this microphone, the cable, the positioning, all of these things take time. And then you record it, and you got to get zoned for that. And then after you got to edit it, you got to make it sound good. You got to write the shownotes title. Got to upload it, you got to promote it. There's so many steps to it. I've said this many of times that rarely does anyone ever get into podcasting as a host to become a great editor, they need to focus on becoming a great host. And that's why I'm so excited to have you on today. This is a two part question here. One is why should someone hire a podcast editor? And continuing on that? What does someone need to know about hiring a podcast editor?
Zack David:Yeah, great question. So I like to do the comparison of a podcast editor and like a car mechanic, you can fix your own car. But unless you have years of practice doing it, it's going to take you a YouTube video three hours of time, and that uneasy feeling of did I do that right? When you're like test driving your car afterwards, the mechanic, it's going to take them a half hour of time, and then you're going to have two and a half hours of extra while you're gonna have three hours of time because they did that half hour of time anyway. So there you have three extra hours of time, which is worth money, because you're an entrepreneur, and you know that it was done right. And if you have any questions or if anything's not kosher, anything's not 100% the way that it should be, then you loop back with the editor. Whereas if you fixed your own car, then well, I guess then you're going to have to loop back with a mechanic and pay him anyway or, or you're going to have to go to that editor. So I don't discourage people from giving it a shot to edit on their own to like, see what it entails. But it's like any profession, a podcast editor is generally going to have yours under their belt. And more important than having yours under his or her belt, listen to the work that he or she has edited. You know, listen to it in your car, listen to it from your iPhone, from your speakers, headphones, and just listen to how it sounds correct and good everywhere. You know, you're driving your car on the noisy freeway, and you can still hear all of the participants in the podcast interview. You know, there's not Jimmy with a booming voice that's super loud. And then Jane comes in with a soft voice and then tell him comes in Whispering Why are you whispering Dylan. But the point is that you are an entrepreneur, and you have more important things to do. Just like Dylan said, You didn't get into podcasting to be an epic editor you got in there to be a great host provide value, become that beacon of information in your field drive leads, create great connections with guests and listeners. There's so many beautiful things about podcasting. I could just keep going about that. So yeah, that's I would say that's why you should hire an editor. And I believe part two of the question is what should somebody look for when they're looking for an editor? Right?
Dylan Schmidt:If I get an editor, you know, I don't have time to get an editor or, you know, what do they need to know about getting an editor? So
Zack David:it just kind of depends on which type of editor you want. Do you want an editor that you send them the files, they edit them, shoot them back to you? Or do you want the type of editor that is a full on agency with unlimited support, and that really knows your show? So I think those are kind of the different types of editors, I would say Does that answer the question? Good, sir.
Dylan Schmidt:Yeah, it does. Last thing. How can people learn more about you, Mister podcast, man, the podcast, man.
Zack David:Oh, thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. I think the best way is shoot me an email Zack at the podcast man.com I have fun on Instagram and I ignore all the other social media. I don't know if I necessarily recommend that as a strategy but I'm working on it. So I'm hanging out over on Instagram, the podcast man with little underscores between the words but search engines are getting good on everything these days. Just type in the podcast man you find it and you know if you want to go old cool you can shoot the the podcast man logo up into the night sky and I'll try and locate yeah
Dylan Schmidt:thank you so much for coming on Zack it's been a pleasure having you
Zack David:I had a lot of fun Dylan keep on doing what you're doing and everybody who listened Thank you very much