Sentence Gap, Transition, and Shorts

A podcast is an excellent medium to bolster your personal brand. Whether you’re hosting or appearing as a guest, it offers a platform to share your insights that viewers might find intriguing. Moreover, a podcast showcases your expertise, allowing listeners to get to know you. As they engage with your discussions or entertaining chats, they find you relatable, building a craving for more of your content.

Starting a podcast might seem simple: get a microphone, set up the environment, and invite a guest. However, the real challenge emerges post-recording. You’re left sifting through raw audio, video footage, and unintended digressions from your sessions. The solution? Skillful podcast editing. This is the secret to morphing your raw material into an engaging narrative that mesmerizes your audience.

Our team edits for 10 podcast channels on YouTube. Here are some pro tips.

Stay Organized

Before you dive into editing, sketch an outline of your podcast’s message and delivery. This includes the main content, introductions, outros, and special segments. It’s crucial to determine your episode’s desired length.

Post-recording, meticulously arrange your files. This covers raw audio, video clips, b-rolls, graphics, and any other elements. Proper organization streamlines your editing, preventing future headaches.

AI-Driven Editing Software: Great for beginners

Choosing the right video editing software is paramount. Options abound: Descript, Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, Audacity, Adobe Audition, and Adobe Podcast. While tools like Descript and Adobe Podcast are AI-centric and user-friendly, they have limitations, particularly in transitions and motion graphics. As you delve deeper into podcasting, you may gravitate towards Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro.

Each tool offers unique features, varying learning curves, and distinct pricing. So, research thoroughly to select a platform that aligns with your proficiency and budget.

Podcast Editing: 3 Expert Tips

1. Be Conscious of Sentence Gaps

You don’t want to include everything in your podcast especially the long pauses, irrelevant conversations, filler words, and stutters, right? That’s why you have to cut and edit out all the mistakes.

You can do this manually or even automatically. All editing software now offers auto-transcription and they are surprisingly good. The problem is they are not perfect. When a person omits certain words or speaks at a lower volume, AI can’t process these properly. So automatic removal of filler words or word gaps is useful when you have limited time and budget. For higher-end production, you will have to review every cut.

Now, how do you keep the podcast natural? Sometimes, when eliminating errors and cutting out, it can be easy to overdo it and disrupt the natural flow of the narrative. So, you need to always check (even when trimming automatically) if it still sounds natural and not overly edited. If your cut leaves just 1–2 words per clip, it might be better to avoid making those cuts. Also, the pace depends on the type of content.

It is also helpful to take note of the ideal sentence gap durations depending on your content and the pace of your podcast. As a general guideline, we like to keep the sentence gap duration at a minimum of 0.4 seconds before deciding to trim. But there are cases in which small gaps are better to keep, like when you are moving to another topic. Also, it depends on your content. If content is technical, viewers need time to digest and a longer word gap duration would be helpful. So, feel free to adjust durations based on your podcast’s unique style and audience preferences.

2. Use Multiple Cameras or Try Morph Cut

With all the files you have, video cuts and transitions are necessary to create. This is where you let one clip or scene transition to the next, making your podcast into a cohesive narrative.

Choose the most appropriate cuts and transitions during your editing process. Hard Cut, which is the most straightforward cut, is great for eliminating mistakes or long pauses as it removes a section of an audio or a clip abruptly. Yet, too many of these can negatively affect the viewing experience no matter how cleanly they are cut.

You can make these hard cuts smooth with two techniques. First, you can use multiple cameras. By switching cameras, hard cuts can be somewhat hidden. Second, you can utilize the morph cut or smooth cut. If you want to tighten up your conversations, then this transition can help you create a more polished podcast by seamlessly merging jump cuts between sound bites. With morph cut, you can effectively clean dialogues by removing unwanted portions of your clips and then applying it to smoothen out distracting cuts. You can also achieve a smooth visual continuity between clips using it.

To apply morph cut transition, just identify the jump cuts that need some fixing and select the clips, then apply it and adjust the duration to make it look seamless.

3. Strategize Your Shorts

While full-length podcast episodes provide value, in-depth exploration, and building a dedicated audience, turning them into a short-form video and uploading them to your chosen platform such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts is a powerful strategy to promote your podcast and attract a new audience.

Just identify and select engaging segments from the full episode. Edit and trim seamlessly, create intro and outro, and write compelling captions. This is optional, but you can add visuals to make it more eye-catching and engaging. Plus, don’t forget to promote the full episodes! Include a call to action (CTA) or a link to encourage viewers to explore more of your content.

You can choose from a lot of great editing software options to edit or repurpose your long podcast to shorts. Descript, Opus Clip, Riverside.fm, and Kapwing are some of the great ones you can select for ease and efficiency. We find Descript versatile and useful among other options. It is good for both audio and video editing, although you still would use Adobe Premiere, Final Cut or Davinci Resolve for more advanced editing such as lower thirds and custom transitions.

With the booming popularity of podcasting and many creators out there, stand out and find ways to share the best of what you can offer. Reach a broader audience and engage with them through bite-sized, shareable content.

A Bonus Tip!
You can enhance your podcast with additional elements. This can come in the form of adding visual appeals, sound effects, and music. This is all up to you and the message you want to tell your audience.

To complement your main content, you may add images, graphics, or B-roll footage to illustrate key points. Incorporate text overlays and lower thirds to provide content or highlight important information. You can also add sound effects or music if you think doing so will make your podcast better.

If you aim to enhance your listeners or viewers’ experience, be creative and think about what you want to incorporate while sticking to what’s appropriate with your podcast.

Review and Export!

We know you’re excited to share it with everyone, but don’t forget the only step to catch mistakes — reviewing your edit! It’s always important to review or double-check despite knowing what you edited because you may have overlooked something… and we don’t want to share a podcast that has poor quality! So, only export when the podcast is polished to perfection. Export it in the appropriate format and resolution.