Audio vs Video Editing: Riverside Workflow Tips (Full Transcript)

[00:00:01] Speaker 1: And this is another Riverside Community Workshop. And every month we host a different workshop with a member of our community to talk about different skills so that we can all share and learn from each other. And this one is a very popular topic. I am very excited to talk about it with all of you. We're going to be talking about editing today. So we're going to be talking about some shortcuts, some tricks, what to focus on, how to edit your audio versus video. And I want to hear from you all in the chat as we get started. Are you editing for yourself? Are you editing for clients? Would also love to know if editing is something that you love to do, something that you struggle with. Because I know in this community, it kind of runs across the board. There are people who love editing. There are people who really struggle with it, find it tedious. So we've got a lot of editing for themselves, struggling with it, editing for clients and themselves. So we've got some people across the board. And as you file in, I just want to do a quick overview. So as I said, Riverside Community Workshops are workshops that are inspired by the topics that are important in our Riverside community. So we've had topics on AI, we've had topics on editing, SEO. Well, actually, no, this is our time on editing. And so, yeah, editing is just a topic that always comes up. Everyone loves to have the conversations, loves to record and speak with their guests. But then when it comes down to editing, there are some people that are definitely in this chat that are pros and just want to keep perfecting their skills, and then there are some people that find it a bit daunting. So that's what this session is all about, talking about what's important, talking about how you can edit your show cleaner, smoother, and just talking about the art of editing. So I thought that there's no better person to talk about this with than Steve Stewart here from our community. Steve, thank you so much for joining us today.

[00:02:01] Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. And boy, you're giving me more credit than I deserve.

[00:02:06] Speaker 1: No, no, not at all. You are also managing a community of podcast editors, am I right?

[00:02:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. We've got the Podcast Editors Club, which is mainly a Facebook group. We've got like 9,499 members, so I need one more to make it 9,500. And then I co-founded the Podcast Editor Academy with Mark Deal, and we train people how to edit better and more than that, how to run a business as a podcast editor, either as a serious side hustle or as a career.

[00:02:34] Speaker 1: That's amazing. So yeah, I would love to have you introduce yourself. How did you get into editing? I want to hear a little bit of the background here.

[00:02:43] Speaker 2: Sure. So I had a show from 2010 to 2015, and I was doing it all myself, just like most podcasters do. And I was editing my own show. I was doing everything, the show notes and the recording and marketing, which was my weak link. And I was attending this very niche conference. It started out as financial bloggers, but kind of expanded to include people who are doing podcasts and YouTube and things like that. And I was always encouraging people in that community to start a podcast. I was freely giving advice and helping people out. And a couple of well-known bloggers were getting together. They were talking in 2015 about starting a show together, and they just kept talking and talking and talking about it and never did anything. So they called me up and said, you know, they were thinking of each other, you know, Steve's always helping people. Let's give him a call. So we had a chat probably for an hour. And by the end, they're like, you know what, Steve, we just want to hit record. Will you do the rest? And I'm sitting there thinking, you know, these are two well-known bloggers in the space that I love, personal finance. I can't say no to them, of course. So I started editing their show. And when other people in the community heard that I was doing it for this couple, they're like, oh, well, we know Steve. We know him from FinCon, the conference I was talking about. Maybe he'll do it for us, too. And it just exploded into a career in about six months. By mid-2016, I had to give up everything I was doing just because the workload was so huge. It was amazing. And I love it.

[00:04:05] Speaker 1: That's amazing. And also, I think, really inspiring. I don't mean to speak for everyone in the community, but I would say that it's very inspiring for people to be able to really get into editing, perfect it for their own show, but then also know that they can apply that skill and really start a career out of it. So it's really great to hear that that's what you've been doing. And I want to talk about editing for you. What do you think is the most common misconception about editing? Before we talk about what you should be doing and go through all of that, what are people doing wrong?

[00:04:41] Speaker 2: Well, not what they're doing wrong. I'll go to the answer of the misconception. The biggest misconception is that you have to have every um cut out. And that will drive you crazy. It will drive you out of podcasting. You'll quit. You can't get them all. People weave words together to where they're saying and um together. And you can't. I mean you could, it's just not worth it. So it doesn't have to be perfect because guess what, humans aren't perfect. AI is perfect. So we don't want to sound like AI. That's the biggest misconception I think in podcasting and that's if we're talking about video or audio. And there's actually differences in there as well.

[00:05:22] Speaker 1: And people were saying in the chat that there's a bit of an echo on my end talking about perfect. So I'm actually, hold on, going to rejoin, see if that helps us really quickly. Steve, while I'm doing that, tell the audience about kind of what they should be, should they be, a lot of people are leaving things raw. Why should you really be editing what you're doing?

[00:05:45] Speaker 2: Well my opinion of course for that would be editing makes things better. People don't read books that have never been edited. People don't watch movies that haven't been edited. The level of editing of course is the big question here. People think, as we were mentioning just a minute ago, that it's got to be perfect. Doesn't have to be perfect. Now there shouldn't be any bad edits. That's bar none. No bad edits. Don't make it sound like it was edited. That's another thing is people take out all the breaths, all the pauses, people don't talk that way. So it's not natural and that's never a good experience for a viewer or a listener. And I know with viewing you can have jump cuts and hide things really well. With audio I tighten things up with editing and make things, one of the shows I do has got a very strong sense of humor that underlines the whole show and when I'm making things peppy and a little closer I can overlap things where it does just make things funnier. It just makes things more enjoyable to listen to. I think that's, it's kind of like, well we can talk about audio and video, the differences there when we get to it.

[00:06:59] Speaker 1: Let's talk about audio versus video. I know I'm still having an echo and I'm working on it but I want to hear about, it might be, it might be, are you, is it coming from your computer? Maybe it's playing out loud and your mic is picking it up?

[00:07:12] Speaker 2: No, let's just see if people notice a difference with you now.

[00:07:15] Speaker 1: Okay, are we checking it now?

[00:07:17] Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we'll find out from the audience. You were asking me what? The question about?

[00:07:23] Speaker 1: The difference between audio and video editing. Should you be putting out the same thing when you're doing audio and video?

[00:07:29] Speaker 2: My opinion is absolutely not. Now the difference can be only by one percent, it could be a difference of 50 percent. Audio is different than video. It really is a different experience when you're listening to a podcast versus watching something that's a podcast episode in video form. With video, you could actually be more forgiving with all the crutches. People have their senses working and doing other things as well as watching and they're a little more tolerant to the stumbles like I just did. Whereas if I were to like, you know, say like every, you know, like every couple like seconds, you know, like if I didn't cut some of those out in audio, it'd get really annoying really fast. So there's a difference just in that one piece of the experience between audio and video. With video, you have the challenge of keeping people engaged visually. Right now, it's just you and me talking. It's a Zoom call basically, but with much better quality.

[00:08:32] Speaker 1: Riverside. Right.

[00:08:34] Speaker 2: I mean, it's like, you know what I mean? It's just, it's, it's what everybody experienced in 2020. Just two talking heads on a screen and is boring. It's boring. You got to do something. I'm not going to put on a costume. We can do that if you want. You can throw open emojis or something on the screen if you want, but you know, camera switching and B roll, different angles, those types, or even just sound effects, sound effects would help keep that visual experience going where it keeps people engaged, especially if you're trying to hit that YouTube algorithm and everybody wants to hit the YouTube algorithm. Takes a lot. It takes a lot to, to make people stick around and try to consume more of the content. And YouTube thinks that if people are consuming more, it must be good content. They're going to recommend it to more people. But if I've got sound effects going on throughout the show, the listener, they're gonna be like, what is with the buildings and the swooshes and the, you know, uh, I was listening to something the other day and it was definitely from a video. Cause they're like pages turning and, and I figured out what was going on after I initially thought, well, there's just noises coming around somewhere. Uh, it was actually from, from the recording. It was just, it was audio taken from the video.

[00:09:49] Speaker 1: So I do have from our backend, this, the, the echo on my end might be from your loopback playing the audio from your browser, picking up from your browser. So we're doing live and I think that's kind of the beauty of live. Now you can hear me twice, but Steve, because I'm having this issue, I might just hand it over to you if you'll feel comfortable with that. And you show us some of your tricks editing. Are you cool with that? Being in the hot seat right now?

[00:10:15] Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, I've got a lot of stuff I could show. I just feel bad that I'm the one creating the problem here.

[00:10:20] Speaker 1: No, I'm creating the problem. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. Cause then you can hear me twice.

[00:10:26] Speaker 2: No, no, no. Okay. Well, uh, where do we want to go here? Um, I've got a couple of, of examples of what I want to share as why audio doesn't work the same from a video, because when we're editing, we'd like to edit everything once we'd like to have one process, one through. And I have a client who we tried that for about a year and a half and was getting complaints about the production, excuse me. And so much so that she decided, okay, we're going back to the old process. The video editor does a video and Steve does the audio, which is the way I love to do it. So I'm going to play something for you. And I want you to just listen, just listen to the audio and tell me if you can tell there's something wrong with this, with this setup, back from FinCon Stewart, along with my co-host and co-founder of the podcast at our Academy. All right. Is there anything wrong with that audio? I wonder if I don't see that there's a button for the chat, right?

[00:11:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a button for the chat on the right.

[00:11:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So what I'm trying to show here is that we're not seeing the video, but we're hearing the audio and the volume of the music is really loud. However, if I were to play it for you with the video, you see my mouth moving and somehow the human brain can just perceive things differently. Yeah, I can see. Jacoy answered it right. Music's too loud. Yeah. So when I did the video version, I didn't realize the audio of the music was so loud because when I was looking at it, I was like, oh, it just seems fine to me, but it was definitely too loud. If that was audio, audio version of podcast, it, it, it drive me crazy. I wouldn't be able to hear. And that was me. That was a show that I co-hosted with Mark Deal for podcast editors. So that's why I use that, that example. Now let me give you another one, and this is going to be coming from, I'm going to share my screen for this one. Let's see if I can do it right this time. And for some reason I'm not getting the pop-up. Why am I not getting the chat, the share screen option? Here we go. Here we go. All right. And I believe you'll be able to hear. Where is it? There we go. Nope. This is where we all go crazy. Just talking about, Hey, I'm going to share my screen. All right. So we should be seeing, that's the wrong one. We should be seeing a Riverside video, right? Are we seeing it?

[00:13:17] Speaker 1: I see. We see your studio.

[00:13:18] Speaker 2: You see my studio. Okay. Now I'm going to be showing the wrong one. Oh, I see. We're sharing the wrong one. We did this in rehearsal and it was great.

[00:13:32] Speaker 1: It always happens.

[00:13:33] Speaker 2: Here, let's just go to this one then.

[00:13:35] Speaker 1: It's like rehearsal is always perfect and then you go live.

[00:13:37] Speaker 2: Oh, I can do it over here now. Okay. This is great. There we go. It just moved on me. All right. So we should be seeing, yeah, a Riverside video, right? Okay. Difference between audio and video, the video edits can be really tight and difficult. And with that text overlay, I still have all the controls like normal to resize it, change the font. I can center it in the frame using the alignment guides. The co-creator makes edits. All right. Did you just hear that edit? Did you hear that? There's a slight cut. Now we're doing jump cuts because it makes this video and Steven does such a great job. I'm so jealous of his video editing and his performance skills, but there's a bad edit there, which I'm not trying to call out Steven. I'm just using this because we're on a Riverside call. I thought that'd be great. But then there's this example too, where if we're doing video editing, we've got to be conscious of consistency flow. And we've got this one here. If you've seen this one, I'd have everybody raise their hand in the chat, but this is a great example of bad video editing. Of course, this was done on purpose.

[00:14:48] Speaker 3: Crap. Somebody had to take the babysitter home. Then I noticed she was sitting on her. We can. Grab her. See what he can. Oh, yes. Thinking about her can. I just wish I had her. Sweet. Sweet. Sweet.

[00:15:00] Speaker 2: Okay. So like it's really annoying after a while. Those are examples of some reasons why we've got to pay attention when we're editing video to not do it in a bad way. Now Riverside's got these great AI tools. I mean, you guys have really done a great job putting these tools in place where it's so easy to do. I can just hit buttons and let the thing do its thing. AI is taking its place. And there are some concerns, of course, with things we need to keep, be aware of. Now I'm going to give everybody here what I'm calling the, if you're short on time, here's three things you must do in Riverside list. So I'm going to go and share a new screen. Now this one's going to be tricky and this isn't, should work. I'm going to go to this one here. So you should be seeing a Riverside project. Okay, great. And I was going to show, yeah, let's go in and edit that one. So this is what everybody should be doing if they're in Riverside editing with the AI tools. I haven't played with that enough yet, but boy, that magic is there. You guys have really done a great job. But I like to have control over each and every step of the process. The ones I use and the order that I go in is kind of important because I like to have it cut out the filler words first. And there's that smart option here. The mute option is really great too, because if you do an, um, when you're speaking and you mute that, the video is not going to have a jump cut and it's just going to pretty much silence the, um, so that you just look like you're about to say something, but it was an, um, so it's really helpful. The smart one's really good too. I've seen it where it leaves some in, it takes some out. That's pretty good. So we'll apply that. There's also the, um, remove pauses and find fluff. Find fluff is interesting. I've, I've been playing with that a bit. Doesn't really find everything, uh, but I shouldn't expect AI to do everything for me. Then there's, um, where's the other one? Smart mute. Smart mute's really important because if somebody does have that, that car drives by or, uh, some kind of noise in the room, you know, we're going to apply that as well. Then we've got the smart layout, which is really important because if I've got camera switching going on, then it's going to take some of that boringness of the side by side and it's going to put them side by side and switch cameras, zoom in on one, zoom in another, things like that. And there's actually ways to adjust the rhythm for that as well. Now, the, the hack that I have is once it's done doing that, let me zoom into an area. Did it do the flow? Did it do the filler words? Come on. Yeah, I did. And there's some pauses I can cut out too. Let's go ahead and do that. I like to have the camera switch happen when there's an edit and sometimes with Riverside or with other tools, it's going to, it's going to do that. Maybe it's going to change the camera too soon or too late. So what I'm going through just real quick through the timeline, I'm going to look for those cuts. Like here's an edit right here. You can see the box is showing where this has been either, it's been, it's been cut. So if I don't need this camera switch to go here, I'll just move it here. In fact, here's a, here's a cut right there. So I'm going to have it change at the cut because what we don't want to see is a bunch of jump cuts. Just like filler words, when there's too much filler words in audio, too many jump cuts gets to be annoying to a viewer. So I like to have it, have it happen when it's supposed to happen. So let's play this little piece right here and then you'll see the cut happen, the camera switch happen, and then I'm going to adjust it.

[00:19:15] Speaker 4: And here's what you should know about your investments, your portfolio, what the market's doing. You really shouldn't be worried about this stuff right now.

[00:19:22] Speaker 2: So what's wrong with me doing this and maybe putting him solo at that point. So let's show that again.

[00:19:30] Speaker 4: What the market's doing. You really shouldn't be worried about this stuff right now.

[00:19:33] Speaker 2: Current events versus long-term.

[00:19:36] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[00:19:36] Speaker 2: So then I might just adjust the parameters. I think it was a too much of a cut. I'm going to adjust the parameters just by grabbing it and pulling it around a little bit. That's kind of the most time-consuming thing that I do is just adjusting those video jump cuts after I've applied a bunch of the AI tools. And it's amazing what you'll find as you're doing that too. You'll find things. So I may not have been there for the recording and I might not go through the entire video start to finish until I've got everything ready for a final view. I want to get as much done as I can using AI going through and doing this. I'm finding things along the way. And one more hack is as I'm editing, I'm looking for all those little areas where it's showing sections that have been cut. And if I see a bunch of stuff all in one section, I'm going to focus on that section. Like here's, I don't know if you can see it on your screens, but there's the markers here for pauses and maybe ums that were silenced. There's a lot there. So you might spend a little more time on that area because there is so many AI edits being done. The audio too, adjust audio. Did I do that one? Yeah, magic audio. I always, well here, I've got a better example for you actually. Let me go to another.

[00:20:59] Speaker 1: I want to just jump in really quick. I'm going to mute you because I think that that's might be causing the echo. Can people hear an echo now? Yeah.

[00:21:06] Speaker 2: Can you hear an echo?

[00:21:07] Speaker 1: Can you still hear an echo? Because I stopped hearing an echo. Excellent. And if so, then that's very exciting. No echo. Yeah. I'm back guys. I'm back. So we had a few questions in the chat just as we were going. So just to recap, you said that Cut Fluff, now I'm excited to jump back in. Cut Fluff, if you're low on time. Cut Fluff, you remove filler words, you do the smart mute and you do smart scenes. I just want to go through for anyone who doesn't know what each of those really is. So Cut Fluff, what it does is it doesn't actually cut the fluff. It finds suggestions and it'll go through your transcript and mark places that have suggestions. So for example, like if we're for the part where we're like, hey, try muting yourself. Is this on? It will suggest this is technical talk. Maybe you can consider cutting it out. Or if I did a solo recording and I repeated myself like three times because I wanted to get it right, it went over to that part and said, hey, you repeated yourself here. Consider cutting two of these takes. So it just makes those suggestions. You can decide if you want to keep those suggestions or not. But that is really what Cut Fluff does. Remove silence or remove filler words. Basically what Steve touched on is it'll remove the ums and ahs. But if you use the smart function, what it does is for long ums and ahs, it will cut it out completely. But for short like that, it will just mute it. If you're watching a video and you see someone say um really quick, all it looks like is that I closed my mouth. So if it just mutes you really quick, that we found is better for the flow of the video. That might be different for audio, so Steve, let me know. For smart mute, what that does is it will mute a person when they're not speaking. So for example, I had an interview with somebody and their fan was going the whole time. I can't escape that. I mean, I could use magic audio to try to fix that a bit. I can't really escape that otherwise when I'm speaking. So what it does is that when I'm speaking, it'll mute the other person. So my audio is still crisp, clear, does not have that fan. But then when they're speaking, that'll be their audio. So that really helps clean up your sound. And smart layouts just basically changes the cuts and makes them side by side. Full screen, screen share, it really just makes the video flow better. I actually love the recommendation that you just gave. I do the same thing. That every time that there's like a cut, I'll change the scene. And I think that it's just such a smart hack. Another hack that I wanted to add is that if you're alone or even if you have a guest, if you use your iPhone or your iPad or your phone, doesn't have to be iPhone, as a second camera angle, you could do the same thing there. But if you have a cut, you can suddenly change it to your second camera angle. So it smooths it out a bit. I also like to use the crop function for that. So sometimes if I want to use a cut, I'll crop myself in farther so that it looks like I did that purposefully. So that I really want to hone in on a point, crop, take myself back out, and it helps smooth out those cuts. So yeah, I'd love to see more hacks that you're doing in Riverside so that you can really I think that that one was really helpful.

[00:24:27] Speaker 2: That was almost all of them. Are you able to hear me again?

[00:24:31] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can hear you.

[00:24:32] Speaker 2: Good. As I muted my mic and half the time I forget to turn it back on. The other hack that I do is sometimes I'll have direction given to me from my clients. They'll say, Steve, we're going to do that again. So there's words that you should look for in the transcript. You can search the transcript or the timeline of not the timeline, but it is the transcript on the side of the video. For words like sorry, I've got a list of words here. So you got sorry, or you go, or go ahead, cut that out, take that out, redo, restart, go back. Any of those types of words that indicate that something might have been redone. They stopped to regroup and started again. Look for those in the transcript and that again, we're talking about saving time. If I find a whole minute where they went off the rails, they regrouped, they restarted, they're going to say, hey, let me go back and talk about this again. Well, I've just saved my time from having to watch that minute first. Let's say I start watching from beginning to end. I watched that full minute and then I realized, oh, they didn't want to keep that. They want to go back and do it again. Here's the new part. Well, if I'm doing all this stuff at the beginning, prepping the work, then I find it and I take out that minute. Now, when I'm going from A to Z, instead of a 45 minute recording, it might only be 42 minutes long. Trust me, that saves you time overall, especially, well, yeah, that just saves your time overall if you're finding those big sections that are supposed to be taken out. If you weren't there during the recording, you didn't already know about this, your client didn't notify you.

[00:26:13] Speaker 1: Yeah. So here's a trick that I like to use. It's the same kind of thing. I learned it when I was working in TV, you say edit. So I'll be like, edit, I think that your mic's not really working. Can we look into this? Or edit, hold on, I need to cough. And so then I just go through my transcript, I search edit, and it takes me to every single time that I did that. It's like giving yourself notes that'll make it easier down the line. So yeah, that's just a little trick I have from TV. I see that Jamie, who also worked in TV, is agreeing with this one. That's a fun way to do it. I'll remember that when I'm editing all of the Echo in the beginning. Steve, I'll probably ask for your help with that. I do want to talk about something, because we get a lot of questions in the community about EQ, when you go into kind of like, because Riverside, we added EQ presets. But we also added the ability to kind of do it yourself, a bit more DIY. But for a lot of people, they open up this graphic EQ, and they're like, what in the world's happening? So do you mind going through just a quick overview for the audio on kind of how to work that?

[00:27:19] Speaker 2: Do you want to show it in Riverside, or just talk about it overall?

[00:27:23] Speaker 1: If you could show in Riverside, that would be cool.

[00:27:25] Speaker 2: Well, I'm trying to remember where it went, because I think it moved, didn't it?

[00:27:29] Speaker 1: I'll show you. I know where it goes.

[00:27:33] Speaker 2: Hold on. Are you sharing your screen?

[00:27:34] Speaker 1: See, now you're like, oh, God. Here we go again.

[00:27:36] Speaker 2: Let's see if we've got an Echo coming up. Sorry, y'all.

[00:27:40] Speaker 1: Oh, sorry, Echo.

[00:27:43] Speaker 2: We want this one. All right. And we want... I'll do that.

[00:27:51] Speaker 1: Okay, so to get to the EQ, go to your tracks on the right-hand panel.

[00:27:57] Speaker 2: Oh, that's right.

[00:27:58] Speaker 1: Now, click into Eric, let's say.

[00:28:01] Speaker 2: Right. I clicked on his name. It wanted me to change his name. Okay, there we go.

[00:28:06] Speaker 1: Under EQ, you could turn that on, and then do presets, which we have, which you could just listen back in real time, but you can also, if you click on that toggle next to the... There's the toggle, and then there's kind of... Yeah, right there. That'll actually show you graphically your EQ settings. Do you mind talking a little bit about that? Because it's also selfishly a question I have.

[00:28:30] Speaker 2: Yeah. Let me see if this is the one I was thinking of, where... Really difficult path. Oh, did I turn it? Hold on. I got to check and make sure this isn't the one I turned on the AI. I did turn on the AI audio. I can turn that back off, so let me do that, and we'll go back to what the original settings were, and you're going to hear, hopefully, y'all can hear the difference.

[00:28:52] Speaker 5: That doesn't tell us what it actually means to be...

[00:28:55] Speaker 2: She's kind of distant from the microphone, and you can hear it in the room, too. Let me play it a little bit again. Just listen closely.

[00:29:03] Speaker 5: That doesn't tell us what it actually means to be a long-term investor.

[00:29:07] Speaker 2: So what I'm going to do is go into that track setting.

[00:29:10] Speaker 1: Was she not using a microphone? She's just using her Mac mic?

[00:29:14] Speaker 2: It was far away.

[00:29:15] Speaker 1: Oh, okay. I was going to say, that's just definitely something that people can relate to.

[00:29:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. They were definitely going for more of a video look than the audio side. So we're going to go into EQ, and I'll go into the settings. Now she sounded really thin, which means I want to maybe give her a little more low end. So I can just grab these dots and just give it a little more low end. Or if they're nasally, I can bring down some of the middle here, because you get those people who have that nasally sound, and that's going to change the way that all... In fact, I'll just boost it up. We're going to hear a difference, quite a bit of a difference here when I play it back. Whoops.

[00:29:56] Speaker 5: People are like, ah, you're a long-term investor, you have time. That doesn't tell us what it actually means to be a long-term investor or what to do about any of it.

[00:30:07] Speaker 2: So let me take it off and we'll see if we can notice, hear if we notice a difference.

[00:30:11] Speaker 5: That doesn't tell us what it actually means to be.

[00:30:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, to me that sounds a lot different. Hopefully the people who are listening. Sorry to be jumping around.

[00:30:19] Speaker 1: How do you know which toggles to bring up and down?

[00:30:22] Speaker 2: Well if you look at the ranges here, and let me just give a... Oh, I'm hitting the wrong button again. Sorry, EQ.

[00:30:30] Speaker 1: We just love Magic Audio. We'll show it off again and again.

[00:30:33] Speaker 2: So think of this as kind of like a timeline, but for audio, it goes from bass to treble. Left is bass, right is treble, and in the middle is where most of our vocal range is. So if you've got somebody who's very, you know, you get the guy who's got the low voice like this, but it's a little too much, it's just vibrating everything, then we can take some of that down. If they're in that echoey room, sometimes taking that down helps. If you've got somebody who just needs a little bit more boost in the high ends, you just raise these up here, and you can make it a little more flow like that. There's so much here that I can't even begin to describe. I'm not even a master at this. There are people who are probably screaming at me right now saying, Steve, that's not how it works. But the low end is the bass, the low end stuff, and the high end on the right is where you get really high, and you know, the high tones, and if you have somebody who has really serious S's, that's where you're going to want to try and affect that sound is up in the high ends. You're not going to get that down in the low ends. The S's are way up here in the high end.

[00:31:49] Speaker 1: And so what would you do for that? Because that is definitely a problem that I have personally.

[00:31:53] Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So I would definitely go with a, let's see, do you have a de-esser in here? Crisp and clear, voice boost, muffle free, well, let's go to the bottom and see. Custom. Okay, I'm on custom now. I wonder if the mids cut would do it. Soften sharp or harsh tones for a more pleasant sound. That might be it right there. If this is not called a de-esser, then I might be using something like that. And really what you need to do, everybody's voice is different. Here's the problem with podcasting, the answer is always, it depends. Every question in podcasting, the answer is always, it depends. Every voice is different. So in this couple here, they changed microphones mid-season. So all the EQing and stuff changed because they've got a different microphone, they've got it closer to their mouths. I don't have to do as much work anymore to get their audio to be better. The news is with Riverside AI tools, it kind of takes care of that for me. A lot of these AI tools really do a good job bringing them closer to the way that it's going to be a more pleasant sound. And if I could talk a little bit about, I'm going to stop sharing my screen, how do I do that? Oh yeah, here we go. A lot of people say, you know, you shouldn't edit because we want to keep it real. Steve, aren't you changing the way they sound? Okay. Have you ever seen a YouTube short that was 10 minutes long? No, you see a YouTube short and it's cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. When we're editing the audio side for either video or audio podcast episodes, I need to get it so people can hear it when they're listening in their little tiny earbuds, when they're outside in the city and there's all the noise around it. So even the best audio quality that we can provide from a, well, if we're using Riverside, we're not going to get a crummy recording unless they're in a bad environment. All the cleanup I need to do is to get that so they sound better. And they don't usually sound too different from themselves, it's just sometimes it's going to sound a little more bassy or a little more high end if we're doing things wrong. So I have no problem with editing people and making it sound better because I don't know what they actually sound like in real life and a lot of people who are listening in their little earbuds or while they're driving their car, they're not hearing the exact way that that person sounds either.

[00:34:28] Speaker 1: There is a recommendation from somebody, I want to hear what you think about this, that I heard from somebody that you should edit your podcast using AirPods because that's what most people will be listening to your podcast using. Do you endorse that recommendation or are you like, no?

[00:34:45] Speaker 2: Well, I wouldn't say editing, but audio engineering, sure, I would try it. I would do it both ways. Audio engineering is a little bit different than editing. Editing is more about the cutting and stuff, where audio engineering is that sweetening of the sound, making it sound better. You could try different headphones or different environments and see what it sounds like. Listening to an episode that you edited in the car, it's going to sound different than the speakers that you've got here on the table, right? So is it going to sound clear in those environments where people are, you know, if they're jogging, they're breathing heavy. Can they still hear clearly in their AirPods? That's the clue that you're looking for. And if you have an idea of what your audience is doing when they're listening, if you're doing a show about marathons, these are joggers, they're probably listening while they're running. Then yes, use AirPods and see what they sound like. What percentage of your audience is using AirPods versus these cheap Bluetooth headphones that I got for 20 bucks when I was in a pinch? They aren't the high quality AirPods, but they're not Dr. Beats or whatever. Make it clean. The best audio is clean audio, where it's not echoey, it's not air conditioning running, it's not, you know, Steve interrupting Kendall when she's about to say something.

[00:36:14] Speaker 1: No, it was like Kendall interrupting Steve when he's about to say something. So some people I saw on the channel already were saying like, this is great, audio versus video editing. But like, I don't have time to do both of these things. For the person who's editing audio and video at the same time, do you have any tricks, methods for them that can help them be able to kind of give the best of both worlds as much as they can?

[00:36:42] Speaker 2: Yes, it's a service that I provide. It's a little complicated. I don't know how to describe it very succinctly, so I'm going to give it a shot. We actually edit the audio first. As we're editing the audio, we're making notes of where we make big cuts. So not every crutch word, because as I was talking about before, verbal crutches are a little more forgiving in video than it is in audio. So I'm, we're masterfully editing, me and my contractors are masterfully editing the audio for our clients, but we're making notes of, okay, at this timestamp, there's a section where they had to regroup and start over again. So there's 30 seconds. Now I can go to the video, quickly find it. Just like I was talking about earlier, going through the transcript or, you know, the other tips that I gave like searching for the word, sorry, sorry, were you trying to say something? You know? So that's some of the, some of the hacks that I would use, but to, in my opinion, and we started off with this, you know, the audio experience is different than the video experience and the product can be different. I co-host the show, The Podcast Center's Mastermind Show with Mark Deal. We have guests on and I, we edit the audio masterfully. It's going to be the product we want because we have more listeners than we do viewers. The video version, I use Riverside, use the AI tools because I don't want to spend another eight hours on a product. I want to get it done. And it's actually, the last one we put out was, the audio was 45 minutes and the video is 55 minutes because I cut out more of the audio. There's a piece of the discussion we didn't need and there was other stuff that we didn't need and I was able to identify that. I thought, you know what, for the video version, let's give it, let's give them a bonus. So if they watch the video, they've got a little more, a little more to view, like the bonus content.

[00:38:38] Speaker 1: Speaking of also like video and audio, there's a bit of a, here, if you can, I'll mute you for a second just to make sure we don't have the echo. Speaking of video and audio, there's a lot of talk about the first few, the first minute of your video and audio about hooking people in. Do you, are you a believer of the cold open? I am a believer of the cold open and to let anyone know that doesn't know, that's basically having like a hook in the beginning, maybe a quote that, a question that you asked or a quote that your guest said, and then it comes into, like they said something funny, then it goes into, hey, I'm Kendall and that was my guest saying this and that and then doing an intro. But then my thought is also like, okay, I do the hook, I do a full intro and then I get to my conversation. Isn't that a long way to go? Like is that a lot to kind of front end? What is your thought on how to start a video or audio when you're editing, when it comes to hooks?

[00:39:31] Speaker 2: It depends. I'm sorry, it depends. Jeremy Enns, who co-hosts the podcast, podcast marketing, I'm sorry, I forget the name of the show, but he and Justin from Transistor do a great job of opening that show. They take the clips and they put at the beginning with the music underlaying and it's only maybe 30 seconds at the most. It really does set the stage. Other shows I hear they'll take that snippet from the guest and of course now every show there's a different type of snippet. It's a different person, not the co-host or the host, it's a guest. So it's a hit or miss. Is that really going to want to keep me engaged throughout the whole episode? Most of the time, yes, it does help and it does give that sense of more production value. That's key right there. You're not just making a recording and putting it up on the internet, you're actually putting some effort behind it and it's obviously noticeable to anybody who's listening. So it does depend. If you've got that snippet that's like, wait a minute, they talked about what? I got to stick around for that, then go for it, go for it. But don't let it run for two minutes. I mean, it needs to be like 15 seconds just to get people interested in what the topic might be for that episode. But hopefully they're coming back to you just because they like the show. They don't need the snippet to open.

[00:40:56] Speaker 1: Exactly. I mean, what I think about is that a lot of people when they're looking for their hooks, this is at least my opinion, are looking for the most summarizing thing that the person said during the conversation, that your guest said during the conversation. I don't want to see the whole movie in the first 15 seconds, if that makes any sense. What I like to see is a cliffhanger or maybe it could be a quote that kind of just characterizes your conversation. Maybe the guest is laughing at you being like, well, this is such a ridiculous conversation that we're having. That can be the hook because then I want to hear the ridiculous conversation. It doesn't have to be the main takeaway. It just has to be, in my mind, something that gives you the idea of the flavor of the conversation, what you're going to get. If anyone hasn't tried hooks, I would say to try it out. Take something, take 15 seconds from any part of your interview, put it in the beginning and then play the rest of your episode that you were normally going to play and see how that helps. But I would also say the hook can be from you. As Steve was saying, I go to my favorite podcast because I love the host. I love the guests that they have on and the way they direct those conversations. But I go on for the host. That's why I'm coming to your podcast. It can also be from you. Don't knock the idea of having you as the hook. That's why people are coming back, in my opinion. I want to say there's about 15 minutes left in our session. We got a lot of questions. I'm going to go through some of the questions that we have.

[00:42:36] Speaker 2: Great. I'm going to change my settings here so we shouldn't be getting the echo anymore.

[00:42:42] Speaker 1: Let's test it. Testing. Yeah.

[00:42:44] Speaker 2: Hopefully.

[00:42:45] Speaker 1: Wow. This is exciting. We got a few questions. For editing a video podcast, this is from Angela, how long should it take a 45-minute show to edit? I'm going to go ahead and guess that your response is going to be, it depends, but let's try to give a ballpark.

[00:43:03] Speaker 2: You could do it as little as an hour using AI tools, or you could spend days on it. Think about Mr. Beast videos. They're putting multiple cameras into ... Okay, we got to take it back. They said podcast episode, so we're probably not talking about multiple cameras, and we're talking about talking heads. You want to dedicate about three hours just to the post-production process. If you can do it in less, that's great. If you can do it within three, I think you're more than average. For editing audio, just the audio, it's usually a three-to-one ratio, and that's going to be for someone who's experienced and they know what tools they're using, and not necessarily taking shortcuts with AI. With video, it could take a lot longer, a lot longer.

[00:43:54] Speaker 1: I usually will say, and I'm not a professional video editor, so I'm a podcast editor, but for me, it's double the time of whatever my recording is. You can listen at 1.5, two times in Riverside, but I like to make sure that I at least listen to it one time at the normal speed at one time. As I'm listening to it, I'm making my edits, so what I will do is that, and so then it'll take at least that amount of time to listen through it, but then I'm pausing. I'm doing my edits through it. For me, it takes double the time of whatever the recording is. One trick that I like to do is while I'm doing that pass at one time, like 1x speed, a trick that I have that if you're in the community, you will know about, is that I like to go through the transcript, and every time there's something that I want to make a clip out of, I will highlight it on the transcript, and there's a button that has kind of like a play button on it. It'll pop up. You can hover over it. It's called Make New Clip, and I'll just do that. I'll make all these new clips, and I can go back later and make all those social media clips that I want to make, and even if I don't highlight the full thing, I can just go back and extend it so that I can get everything that I wanted in that clip, but that's what I'm doing, so I'm editing for the full episode, but also kind of pulling out some clips while I do it, and that has really sped up my process, so that's my tip for you.

[00:45:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're also working on your marketing piece there because you're getting the snippets ready.

[00:45:29] Speaker 1: Exactly. So, Louisa asked, any tips for hiring an editor for a video and audio podcast? What am I looking for?

[00:45:37] Speaker 2: Oh, I got the solution.

[00:45:38] Speaker 1: Steve.

[00:45:39] Speaker 2: Okay.

[00:45:40] Speaker 1: It's Steve.

[00:45:40] Speaker 2: That's what you're looking for. I help podcasters find editors because I've got a community of editors who are looking for podcasters to work with, so if you wouldn't mind me promoting something?

[00:45:52] Speaker 1: Yeah, put it in the chat. I'll put it in the chat.

[00:45:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, so I've got a short little video that explains the process if you go to stevestuart.me, and that's stevestuart.me slash find an editor. stevestuart.me slash find an editor, I've got a quick video that shows you, this is how you first look for an editor, and then the question was, what do you look for in an editor? Well, the thing I'm showing that I'm sending people to is a form where they say at the top of the form, the podcaster is telling us, okay, this is what I'm looking for. I have a show, it's like this, we record on Versaide, and we want someone who edits the video like a video and does social clips and will schedule this thing to go out live, whatever. Then below that are a bunch of questions. What does the podcaster want to know about the editor? I've got some already pre-populated there. What's your turnaround time? What's your rate? Do you have any experience here? Do you have a website? Blah, blah, blah. You change those questions to whatever it is that you want to know about the editor. The podcaster then, they're basically making a copy of this Google form, and they're changing it to a way that it's now a job application that they've got. They share a link to that form with me, and then I share that with the editors so that you're not walking into a room of 9,500 podcast editors saying, hey, I'm looking for an editor. You don't want to do that. Nobody's got that kind of time. You've seen it in other Facebook groups or things where somebody says, hey, does anybody know an editor? I'm an editor. I do great work. You should be using this person. Hey, here. Check out my website. You know, there's all these, nobody's got that kind of time. So this form forces people to go through and answer all the questions of the things that you want to know about the editor, and then you contact them to make that conversation, make sure they are the right fit. Really all the questions should pretty much be what are the things that you're looking for. You know, you could ask them what the tools that they use, what are the shows that they've edited before. You know, if they're editing one show, it's probably their own. You probably want somebody who has a little more experience than that. Although I wouldn't, I wouldn't, you know, turn them off if they've got everything else that if they answered all the other questions the way that you'd want. So that's, that's just the best way I've been doing this as a free service for like five or six years. I just want to help podcasters like people who are watching find editors like the people in my community.

[00:48:17] Speaker 1: I love that. So I put the link in the chat. I'll also put it in the email when I sent out this recording. I do want to get to really quickly some things that I've been asked about on the, uh, in the chat. So first thing I want to quickly show off as a student of your, can you see my screen?

[00:48:34] Speaker 2: I can.

[00:48:35] Speaker 1: Okay. As a student of this lesson is that you could see right here, I cut the, I'm doing exactly what you had said. I cut this part out and then I change the scene. This is like slightly zoomed in and this is slightly zoomed out. So instead of having that jump cut, I started a new scene that's like a little bit cropped right here where the cut happened. Same thing over here. So there's a cut at the end of here. And then I change over to me and my guest. So that is just showing everyone that this is, that this is real, a really good editing kind of tip that you can do that I'm also doing. Somebody had asked about listening at 1.5 speed, two speeds. So right over here you see how it says 1X, that's playback speed. You can decide to play it faster, slower. I have, I usually will play it at one time just to, for my first listen, just to make sure everything's all good or actually listen to 1.5 the first time, then go back and listen to it at a one time. I've become pretty pro at listening 1.5 and as somebody that used to cover politics, I will say you have not lived until you've edited a Bernie Sanders rally at two times speed because it really, it's very funny. It's very chip monkey. There is also another question that was in the chat. Let me just make sure that I get to it right over here. How do you zoom in and out of a scene? So I'll just show you right here. Let's say that I want to add a scene here.

[00:50:06] Speaker 2: So go full screen on this. I want full screen. Show me full screen on this.

[00:50:10] Speaker 1: Oh, okay. Hold on. Let me. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So this is crew cropping in and out. So I'm going to go over, I'm zooming, I'm zooming into my timeline. I'm going to go over here to add scene. So it added this scene right here and then you see how I clicked that it became purple. So I click on here and then I have this crop feature. Let me go back and just make sure. Click crop. I'm going to zoom in. Let's go really close. I look very concerned here. I'm going to do this scene. Make sure that it's highlighted that it's saying this scene, not similar scenes. Otherwise it's going to crop me for the rest of my video that are similar scenes where it's just me on screen. But I want it to be kind of this like zoomed in and out kind of effect. So I'll do this scene and click out. That'll apply that crop. And then I want to have it just be really quick, maybe. So I'll add another scene, click here, zoom back out, and then crop applied. So then you can see an ending during that hour or half hour session. And then afterwards, you're not really doing much with it. So you could see how that just added that quick zoom in and out. I actually really like to do this for announcement videos. If you're in the community, I'll be like, there is a big feature coming and I'll do the crop for big feature or for something that can apply to all of you. Like this is a huge episode for us or something like that for huge episode. It's like you can just do that zoom just for a little bit of extra fun and engagement in your videos. And that is something that has really helped me when I am editing. There's also another question about using Riverside and now I am losing it. Oh, okay. So this is what I was talking about before. If I am going through my full video, I'm going to go on the right on the side of the left hand side. And let's say that I want to make this a clip. I will highlight it. And then you can click right here that says create new edit. So when I click that, it'll come up here, as you can see, it's kind of loading right here. I have a million because I really do this all the time. So to find that again later, I could just go down here and pick which part I want. Or if I go back into my project page under edits, I will now find that right here. This 20 second clip. That's my new edit. So then I can go in. I want it to be for social media. So I want to do nine by 16. I want to, yeah, I want to do whatever I want to do with it. As far as editing for social, I can do all of that. But that's just how I quickly make sure that I'm editing for my marketing stuff as well.

[00:52:53] Speaker 2: Hey, can you go back to that? You can just describe it to us. That one where you change the scene with the zoom in.

[00:53:00] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[00:53:00] Speaker 2: So you can describe or show people how to copy that so they can also apply it later in the project where they want to have that zoom in effect and they don't have to try and adjust it manually on the slider every time.

[00:53:12] Speaker 1: Oh, so that it's like similar scenes every time?

[00:53:14] Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, like you do brand stuff with captions. How do you do that with the zoom in effect?

[00:53:19] Speaker 1: So OK, let me do this live. So let me do it live. Yes. Are you doing that? The Bill O'Reilly quote? I knew you'd get it.

[00:53:30] Speaker 2: I don't know how many people watching.

[00:53:32] Speaker 1: Yeah. For anyone who doesn't know, it's actually a favorite quote of mine. I use it all of the time. There's a video of Bill O'Reilly back when he had a show. And there's like a he's trying to read from a teleprompter and the teleprompter keeps malfunctioning. So then he just keeps screaming like, F it, we'll do it live, we'll do it live. And it's an incredible like editors inside joke, producers inside joke. So like use it for yourselves. OK, so if I am creating, let's say, OK, I'm going to make a scene again and then I'm going to make another scene. I'm just going to show you. So for this scene, it's side by side like me. And then for this one, I want it to be just me. So I'm going to click layout. I'm going to click solo speaker and then I click onto the canvas. Click Kendall. And then for this one, I also want it to be layout just me. But this doesn't look good. You see how like I'm kind of on the side again, I look so concerned. I'm going to go to crop. I'm going to change here and let's say I want to crop in. So now if I press similar scenes, you see how this purple one lit up because it's also the same kind of scene like that I'm full screen. That's how I can apply that cut for every one of my scenes. So I'll click out of that and it'll apply for both of these. Let's say over here that I'm really small and Ross is really big. So let me just change that center myself and I'm going to click similar scenes again. You see now this time it's click it did this one and this one. Perfect. So I'll click out of it and it'll apply that crop because it does not look good when you're looking at video that every time I'm a little bit bigger, a little bit smaller, that kind of thing when it switches scenes. Not a great look. So this kind of keeps it uniform across the board. So I hope let me know in the chat if these if these tips are helpful for you. So yeah, let me look through some other questions.

[00:55:54] Speaker 2: Somebody said something about yeah, I was gonna say somebody said something about me having a book. I have an academy. It's visual learning and coaching. So that's where you get the book of Steve.

[00:56:07] Speaker 1: Give him a break. He's got a book. Let me also hold on. Let me make sure that I'm okay. We also have let's go let's give me the give me the question at the bottom. I'm scrolling through all of these written manual for Riverside editing program. We also have a bunch of videos on on line. I can actually maybe for the next one sign off in the chat maybe for the next for the next webinar. I'll do a just tips and tricks kind of going in the weeds of cool things that you can do with in Riverside. If that's what you want to see, let me know in the chat because that's what I like to show. So let me know. We got a lot of thumbs up reaction emojis. Very exciting.

[00:56:57] Speaker 2: You hit a nerve.

[00:56:58] Speaker 1: And then I would say, Steve, if there is one thing that you would say that people should try in their next video or next audio next video that maybe they haven't yet as we're kind of closing out the session. What is one thing like a challenge that you give to them to try it that you think will make all the difference for the next videos?

[00:57:21] Speaker 2: Well let's talk definitely talk video here. We'll assume that they've got the audio dialed in for the video. Try to have that the second angle. What do you call it?

[00:57:32] Speaker 1: Second camera angle.

[00:57:34] Speaker 2: I thought it was called something else simultaneous mode or something with an iPhone or whatever.

[00:57:39] Speaker 1: There's continuity cam which that's what I'm using. So that's with iPhone and a MacBook. And basically you take your iPhone, you can connect it to your MacBook and that uses your iPhone as like a 4K camera. It's actually really impressive. I used to use it all the time for webinars when I first started back in my day. But actually you can use your phone as a second camera angle or a tablet if you have that. Yes. I'm going to send a how to on that.

[00:58:05] Speaker 2: Somehow you get both streams going up to Riverside and you can use the double angle with your post-production and hide some of those edits.

[00:58:14] Speaker 1: Multi-cam mode.

[00:58:14] Speaker 2: Multi-cam mode.

[00:58:15] Speaker 1: That's the term. Multi-cam mode.

[00:58:17] Speaker 2: Yeah. I was going to try that as well. And somebody mentioned Camo. There's an app called Camo which confuses the heck out of me. I think I might just go back to using the Riverside version.

[00:58:27] Speaker 1: You should always.

[00:58:28] Speaker 2: Have that second camera.

[00:58:29] Speaker 1: That's what I challenge you to do. Go back to just using the Riverside version. I'm kidding. But if you have not tried the Riverside editor in a while, we have added a ton of new features and I feel like every day. We announced them first in our Riverside community, but because I've actually been on vacation a little bit, I'm a little bit behind on the announcements. So you're going to get a ton of announcements coming very soon. So I put the community in the chat for anyone who wants to join the community and is not part of it yet. We have one minute left. So I want to take that time to say first of all, because I'm really into community feedback, our next session will be also going in and showing some cool tricks within Riverside on what you can be doing for editing. And this has been a really awesome discussion, Steve. So thank you very much for joining this workshop. I apologize for some of those audio issues in the beginning, but you know, it happens and that's why you need to edit.

[00:59:31] Speaker 2: That's right.

[00:59:33] Speaker 1: So Steve, can you remind the people in the chat one more time where they can find you? What's your community called?

[00:59:40] Speaker 2: Sure. If you want to join the community where we discuss only post-production, it's the Podcast Editors Club on Facebook. And if you want to learn more about the post-production and how to make a business out of it, either as a side hustle or as a career, podcasteditoracademy.com. And you'll have to join before the end of the month, we'll be closing the doors for a couple of seasons as we retool a few things and take off for the holidays.

[01:00:04] Speaker 1: Wow. Amazing. So get it while you still can. I'm putting the link in the chat. Otherwise, thank you all so much for joining. This has been a really great workshop and I'd love to get these opportunities to connect with all of you. So thanks again for joining. And Steve, stay on because we're going to upload your video.

[01:00:22] Speaker 2: Yay. Thank you. We'll call it quits.

[01:00:25] Speaker 1: Bye.