[00:00:00] Krystal Proffitt: So we have a question from the community today, and I love it whenever you reach out and you tell me, Hey, Krystal, can you help me with this? Or, this is something that I'm struggling with. On my content journey, whether it's with a podcast, YouTube, or it's something that has to do with your content strategy that you really just want to improve or optimize.

[00:00:24] So I'm excited because today is about editing. We don't usually talk a lot about editing around here because I keep it pretty simple. I don't do a lot of really fancy things with my podcast editing. Or my video editing. I keep things pretty streamlined and basic, and that's for a reason because I'm doing a lot of this myself.

[00:00:46] Okay. Let's be honest. I'm doing all of this myself at this point, and I like to keep it very simple because it's what helps me stay consistent with my podcast content, with my YouTube content, with what I put out on all of my [00:01:00] channels. Whenever the editing subject comes up, I do kind of hide a little bit because I'm like, Ooh, that's not me.

[00:01:06] Like I'm not the expert editor. I'm not the one that does all the shiny, sexy things with my editing, but also I've published over a thousand podcast episodes, and that means I know a thing or two about how to make this process easier. How to. Super consistent in how to make it work. So let's get into today's question from Sasha.

[00:01:30] Let's get right to it. Welcome to the Proffitt Podcast, where we teach you how to start, launch, and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, Krystal Proffitt, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today, because if you've been trying to figure out the world of content creation, This is the show that will help be your time saving shortcut.

[00:01:52] So let's get right to it, shall we?

[00:01:59] Sasha Viers: Hi, [00:02:00] Krystal. I love your podcast. I think you're wonderful and you're really inspiring. My problem is a technical one. It's the editing. I just cannot figure it out. I don't know what course to take to try to learn how to do audacity. I have great ideas for a podcast. I've done them. But I've never gotten anything past recording them because I can't figure out the editing. So, um, thank you so much. Goodbye. 

[00:02:30] Krystal Proffitt: Thank you so much for your questions, Sasha. And thank you for listening to the show. Um, like I said earlier, Editing your podcast is something that podcasters have to face at some point in their journey, whether you do it yourself or you outsource it to a team of people that can help you.

[00:02:48] Editing is part of the process because even me, I've been doing this for several years. I still make mistakes. I still mess up. My dog will bark. You know, like somebody will come to the door and start knocking. [00:03:00] Somebody will ring the doorbell. Kids will be screaming in the background like. So many different reasons to have to implement editing in your podcast journey.

[00:03:09] But like I said earlier, I wanted to be a very streamlined process where it's not something that takes you hours and hours and hours to do. I want you to go in with confidence and say, yeah. I'm gonna edit my podcast today and it's gonna be fun, or it's gonna be easy. It's gonna be simple and it's not gonna be overwhelming.

[00:03:30] That's the biggest piece because when people get into podcasting, they usually hit this like tech overwhelm and it's usually pretty early, especially if you're like me. I didn't have an audio like experienced job before I started podcasting, so I had to. All of these things I had to learn, well, how do I understand which microphone to select?

[00:03:53] How do I know the difference between mono and stereo? What's a dynamic mic? What's a condenser mic? Like what are these X L R [00:04:00] cables and U S B microphones, like what's all the. I have learned so many things about editing through the process that I actually came up with seven basic editing tips that I wanted to share with you today because I think that these are the key things.

[00:04:18] Like if I look back over all the hundreds and thousands at this point of episodes, That I have edited and published. What it really comes down to are seven simple steps that I wanted to share with everyone here today, but especially you, Sasha. I hope that today's episode will give you a little bit of ease and you'll walk away knowing that yes, there's a thousand other fans here, things you could do with your audio.

[00:04:43] But you don't have to, you don't have to do all the fancy and shiny things. You can keep it very basic, very simple, and still have a message that is very impactful for your audience. So let's get into it. 

[00:04:56] 1. Mic Settings: Number one, setting up your mic and adjusting [00:05:00] the settings for your voice. This one's so crucial. It's so, so crucial, and it doesn't matter whether you are recording in Audacity.

[00:05:09] This is the very first, you know, you know, editing tool I ever used. It's free, especially if you have a PC or a Mac. You can absolutely use it for free. You can still download it today and get started. It's the one that I actually recommend for people. That are just beginning their journey. You could use GarageBand.

[00:05:28] If you are a Mac user, then it comes on your phone, it comes on your iPad, it comes on your Mac. Like all of these places, you can use GarageBand or if you're like me, you could use Hindenberg or des, which Des is another platform that I just recently started playing around with more for video and audio.

[00:05:49] First things first, like doesn't matter, like whatever software you use, whether it's super fancy or free, like you have to know your mic settings in the settings within your software. [00:06:00] So I wanna give you a quick story, a quick, for instance, a great example. Whenever I went from my very first microphone, which was a $20 Amazon mic that I bought way back in the day, if you're watching on the video, you can see I have it like way back here.

[00:06:15] It's, uh, it's on my shelf and I keep it. It's like, you know, one of my prized possessions at this point, but it literally has no settings. None whatsoever. Like you plug it in and you go like it's literally a plug and play that you put it, I plug it in my laptop and I would just start recording. And I didn't realize until I got my Blue Yeti, which was like my next step up is there's mics that have.

[00:06:42] Settings and you have to know like, well, what's the gain? And which, you know, little thing on the back of the mic, do I need to adjust it to? So I recommend figuring those out, whether that's watching a YouTube video or you know, looking up that specific model, looking up the specs online about it. Like how do I use [00:07:00] this?

[00:07:00] How do I adjust this? But figuring those out from the beginning. Are crucial, like this is actually more important than you editing or doing anything because we haven't even started recording yet, right? This is the groundwork for what you need to do. And I say this all the time, and actually it's been a while since I said it, so I'm glad this it's coming up organically in today's episode, but I still do mic checks and it's the dumbest thing ever, and I know you're gonna think.

[00:07:25] Super nerd when I say this, but I will say like, mic check 1, 2, 1, 2. And it's so silly. It's so stupid. I understand that. But I'm usually recording in a room by myself, so nobody else hears me when I do that. But I do a mic check before I start recording again, it's super basic, but you need to do this to make sure that your mic is set up for success and that your settings are right because, and I wanna give you one other quick story.

[00:07:54] I spent all this time recording in my closet. I will never forget cuz I was [00:08:00] devastated after it happened. I was sitting on the floor of my closet because I don't, I don't, we didn't have a small table and chair to take in. I don't even know, like why. I was just on the floor next to all of my dirty laundry and I was sitting there recording a podcast episode with my Blue Yeti, right?

[00:08:16] So I had my advanced. Microphone that I had stepped up, upgraded from my $20 mic, and I'm sitting there and I'm recording this episode and I'm so into it. I'm passionate. Like it's, oh, this is so good. I just knew this episode was gonna change somebody's life as soon as they heard it. And then I finished and I went back and listened to it, and I had recorded on my laptop microphone.

[00:08:43] Yeah, like the one that's like right by your webcam. That's like pro. Awful. The whole thing was awful because I didn't go in, I did not do a mic check. I didn't do my sound check, mic check. 1, 2, 0 2. I didn't do any of that. I just sat down and I was like, oh, let me, I just [00:09:00] opened up Audacity and I just hit record.

[00:09:02] I did not realize, I guess there was like some update or something that happened within Audacity. We said all the settings and it picked my laptop mic. Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? Like it was such, it was just devastating. So from that point on, this is why I'm sharing here with you today. Like everybody listening, this is how you avoid these mistakes, is sometimes you just have to make them and you learn and you're like, okay, I won't do that again.

[00:09:28] I will absolutely check my mic settings, check my software settings. Every single time I go to record, I literally did it today before I hit record. I open up Hindenberg and I'm like, okay. Even if I know it's the same every single time I check it, it is the same. It does not change. I go in and I check it because the one time that I don't is when it will have switched to, you know, my camera instead of my podcast mic or my webcam.

[00:09:56] And so you have to check these things. So that's number [00:10:00] one is just setting up your microphone and your audio settings for success. 

[00:10:05] 2. Recording: Now, number two, the second basic function for editing your podcast. You have to record. So it's just simply hitting record and you start talking. Now I know that everyone's like kind of rolling their eyes.

[00:10:19] They're like, yeah, no, duh Krystal like that. It's literally what we're here for. It's what we're doing. But at the end of the day, sometimes that's the hardest part. Whenever I had my talk at podcast movement, you know, whenever we were there for podcast movement evolutions in March, I talked about how.

[00:10:38] Having that anxiety of just hitting record, like it's a real thing. It is a real thing, like having these nerves running through your body. You're like, you got sweaty palms and you're just kinda like, my heart is racing and like my Apple watch thinks I'm going for a run because it's like my heart is pounding.

[00:10:54] What is going on? I'm being chased by a lion, but really it's just me hitting record and I'm [00:11:00] supposed to start talking now. So it is a real thing. So you have to just get in there and start recording if you haven't already started recording your podcast, but then once you have something recorded, right, so now we're gonna pretend that maybe you've recorded 5, 10, 15 minutes of an episode.

[00:11:18] You hit stop. Now, what do you do? Maybe you're at the point of importing additional files, whether that is a prerecorded audio, like, uh, your main podcast theme is what I call it, your podcast main theme, or maybe it. Ads or it's interviews or it's music like, there's so many different things that you have to do.

[00:11:39] 3. Importing: But number three, so we covered setting up your mic and adjusting the settings. Number two, recording clips. Number three is importing additional audio clips that have already been recorded. You have to learn how to work with those on separate tracks. Now, whenever I say tracks, I'm talking about the different lines, right?

[00:11:59] Cuz you'll see the [00:12:00] horizontal lines that go across the screen and you're editing software. You'll notice that they break down, you know, maybe there's 1, 2, 3, and four that you're looking at. Well, when you start importing tracks, you can either decide to put them all on one line, which I don't recommend. I don't recommend putting everything on one line.

[00:12:18] I actually recommend at least two lines, and that simply means that you have like, All of your audio on the top and then underneath, like I always put my music when I have a solo episode, all of my music goes on the second track. So right underneath not all, everything isn't like voice, music, everything on one.

[00:12:38] I have it on two separate ones because that allows me to overlap them and have that nice transition from one audio file to the. All right. We're gonna keep this high level. We're not gonna get advanced into some of the other things that we could be doing because we, I have YouTube videos for that, right?

[00:12:55] I'm gonna share a whole playlist with you on what you can do or what you [00:13:00] can watch to help you with editing. But I just wanna throw that out there, that this is another thing that you have to learn how to do as you get going on your podcast journey. 

[00:13:08] 4. Zoom in & Zoom out: Now, number four, this is my secret weapon. This is literally the thing that I wish I would've done.

[00:13:17] Five years ago when I first started, cuz it is such, it's a time saver. It is something that, I mean, it just, it, it's so simple and it's so powerful using the zoom in and zoom out feature. But taking it a step further, if you have a mouse that has like the rolly like thing on it, I don't even know what it's called.

[00:13:38] Like the scrolling, like dial on your mouse. Use that when you are editing. Oh my gosh. Because here's a for instance of when I would use zooming in and zooming out if I'm recording and you know, God forbid I sneeze in the middle of a recording or I have a really bad tickle in my throat and I start [00:14:00] coughing and maybe it's one of those where like it just kind of happens and I don't pause and take like a long break.

[00:14:06] I don't head stop. Like I just keep going. Well, if I'm listening back to something I recorded, then I, it might be really hard to find, so I'm listening back and then I hear like, oh, oh, that's where I went. Made some like weird, weird mouth noises. You know what I'm talking about. If y'all listen to this podcast, you probably heard me at some point, make some weird noises that I probably just kept in here and you're like, you probably should have trimmed that out.

[00:14:31] But again, I don't do a ton of editing on the Proffitt podcast, but you know, here we are. But this is something, when you zoom in and zoom out, you can cut those a lot cleaner and get them out of your audio. So what I will typically do is I will zoom in, right? Using my, like you, you can't see me if you're just listening to the podcast, but I'm like, you know, zoom in, get to that clip that I want to cut out and I'll.

[00:14:57] Split it. So there's a split [00:15:00] button wherever, whatever software you're using. There will be a split where you can hit it and it will pop it into not one track anymore, but two. And you can kind of just cut it out by moving the cursor back and forth and adjusting it to be like, okay, I'm gonna cut this entire piece right here where it's me coughing, and then I'm gonna move everything back together.

[00:15:21] And in hindenberg you can merge the tracks back together, which makes it really easy. I'll do that, or I'll highlight it and then do a clean cut, which you know, if you've worked on any computers, like Cut and Paste is very familiar, but what it is, is you're just highlighting that section that you don't want to appear in your audio and you're literally cutting it out.

[00:15:44] You don't want that to be in the finished file. But zooming in and zooming out, it's the secret sauce. I'm telling you just learn how to use your mouse in a way, and things get so much faster. So if you find that little, you know, hiccup, weird noise, dog barking, whatever it [00:16:00] is, you can catch it and then delete it a lot easier.

[00:16:04] 5. Adjusting Sound Levels: Moving on to number five, adjusting your sound levels. I've talked about this before. I will talk about it again. I am a very loud person, very loud person by nature. Um, we should have talked about this when we talked about. Adjusting your mic in audio settings earlier, but I don't adjust my voice to my mic.

[00:16:28] I in my settings, I adjust my settings to me because I've tried this before. I tried to adjust like how I speak. I try to. Speak softer, especially in that very first microphone that didn't have any settings on it. I couldn't adjust the gain. I couldn't do anything. I literally would just have to move it further away from my face, like basically across the room.

[00:16:50] So I wasn't shouting into it, but, I adjust my levels and I change the object. So whether that's the mic [00:17:00] or the software to meet who I am naturally, because the other way did not work for me. Speaking quieter and softer and having a calmer deme, like, that's not me. That's not me. I'm loud. I'm loud by nature.

[00:17:15] So I will adjust the levels of my audio. So it's like not in the red, cuz I will say that like I find myself in the. A lot when I'm doing video, when I'm doing audio, I am in the red a lot. So having that basic function of knowing how to adjust your sound levels, and in most recording softwares, it's simply just grabbing like the very top of the track and lowering it down like clicking your mouse.

[00:17:41] Going and grabbing the very top and then just scooting it down a little bit until it sounds a lot better. Now, there are other fancier ways to like grab specific areas and like maybe you're only loud in one particular place, or you know, you go into the red at one spot and you wanna like cut it, grab it, you know, make [00:18:00] it, you know, not as loud or whatever.

[00:18:01] Like, there's so many things that you can do, but at the end of the day, just knowing how to adjust your sound levels is super helpful. Especially this is so, so, so, I. If you're recording an interview and you notice that your volume is so much louder than your guest, you need to adjust that. I was listening to, um, I was doing an audit of someone's podcast recently and they, like, they asked me to go listen to a specific episode.

[00:18:29] I'll do this when I do audits. Um, cuz obviously if somebody's been podcasting forever, I can't go back and listen to every episode, but I'll say, Hey, I'll listen to your latest one with your guest, or I'll listen to a latest solo. And so I was listening to one, and the content was great, but there was a very, very clear difference between their audio and their guest.

[00:18:49] And it makes it really hard to follow along because it's almost like I need to adjust my phone, right? Like I'm walking, I'm, you know, walking on my podcast, you know, listen to it, and then [00:19:00] all of a sudden I'm like, okay, I can't hear them. Okay. So I turn it up and then all of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, the, the other person's back on and I have to turn it way back down.

[00:19:09] Your audience isn't gonna do that for a full 45 minutes, like it's not gonna happen. So you wanna make sure that everything is level, and you can do that in your audio recording software. 

[00:19:21] 6. Cutting, Splitting & Deleting Clips: All right, number six. We kind of covered some of these earlier, but we're gonna go back over them again, and that's cutting, splitting, and deleting clips of audio.

[00:19:31] Now again, most of you'll probably be listening to this and not watching the video version, so I don't wanna go into a whole, you know, explanation of how you cut and split and delete everything in your audio system. You need to know how to do this because again, I'm not perfect. I've been doing this for over five years at this point, and I still make mistakes.

[00:19:53] I still have to make cuts. I still have to delete things. I split things all the time, especially when I mess something [00:20:00] up in the middle. I'll say something and then I realize, oh, I said that wrong, or I said it funny. So I will take a pause. This is key. Take a two to three second pause like.

[00:20:15] Okay. I know that's really awkward, like while you're sitting here listening to it, but that's what I will do when I am editing. I'll mess up and then I do this pause, and then when I'm looking at my wave file, right, I'm looking at the waveform in my audio software. I can see like, oh, why is there a hole?

[00:20:33] Like there's a hole in the audio and there's nothing there. Oh, that's where I messed up. So I can hone in again, use my. Zoom in and out feature and look at that particular place and say, oh, okay, like this is the part where I messed up, so I need to re-listen to it. You know, find that piece that doesn't need to be in there.

[00:20:54] Cut it, split it, delete it, whatever I need to do. And that's how I will edit my [00:21:00] episodes whenever I mess up. I have other friends that tell me when they record that, they'll clap. They'll go, Or that was kind of a weak clap. I'm trying to clap where it's loud. My kids, the, your kids do this, they have this like technique where they clap and it's so loud, like it hurts my ears.

[00:21:16] They'll do it when we go to like a game and they're like, you're supposed to applaud. And it's so loud right next to me. And I was just attempting to do that and it was like the saddest thing ever. I'm so glad they're not here. They'd be like, bro, that's not, not cool. They're 13 and 10. So they call me a bra.

[00:21:33] But, uh, so listen. Much better, right? That sound on an audio file will shoot straight up, like it goes into the red, and what that does is it can I, you can identify that as a place where you messed up. So I'll have friends that will pause and they'll clap, and that indicates to them if they're editing or they're editor, Hey, this is where I made a mistake.

[00:21:56] Like go fix it and make the change. 

[00:21:59] 7. Saving & Exporting Files: All [00:22:00] right. Number seven, we're rounding out for the seven basic editing tips that you need to know, and this is saving and exporting files. Now, when it comes to saving and exporting, you may or may not know this, but you cannot upload. A Hindenberg file, an audacity file, a garage band file into your podcast host.

[00:22:21] This is Bus sprout for me. You have to actually create a waveform, an mp3, another type of audio file that. Podcast host will take. And for me, I typically use a waveform. Um, this is what I've done from the beginning. There's really no other rhyme or reason other than it's what I've done forever. Um, it does take up a little bit more space.

[00:22:44] MP three s tend to be smaller files whenever they're exported. But I think that wave is a little bit higher quality. So there's really no other like secret sauce or magic trick behind that. It's just my preference, and so I will save things and [00:23:00] export them, and then they're ready to go. So those are my seven editing tips to share with you today.

[00:23:06] I hope that this was helpful. I know, like I said earlier, it's probably easier. To hear these things, Sasha on a video and watch step-by-step of how I do it. So I wanted to share with you, I have a playlist on YouTube that is all about podcast editing, so I want you to go check it out. There's gonna be a link in the show notes where you're listening to this, and I want you to go check it out because it will have.

[00:23:30] Audacity tips as well as hindenberg. So if somebody's listening to this and use either one of those platforms, then they will be super, super helpful. But thank you so much, Sasha, for your question today. And if you want to be featured on the Proffitt Podcast, make you make sure you go to podinbox.com/theproffittpodcast and submit your question to be answered here on the show.

[00:23:56] But that's all I have for you today. So make sure you're [00:24:00] following the podcast and subscribe wherever you are listening. And as always, remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.