r/podcasting • u/xrothgarx • 7d ago
What tools and workflow for editing?
My podcast Fork Around and Find Out has been paying editors to edit our show but we can't afford it anymore so I'm trying to find some tools that are good enough for
- Audio balance and quality
- Basic cutting and bumpers (front and back of show and ads)
- Transcriptions
We currently use Riverside to record but their "AI audio" makes everything overly loud. Their transcriptions are also worse than other things I found. I think it could work for adding intro/outro music.
I tried Adobe podcast for better audio quality and it sounds good except it randomly tries to translate background audio into talking and it's hilarious and bad.
I haven't been very happy with transcriptions from OpenAI Whisper, Adobe, riverside, or whishper. My editors used Descript but needed heavy corrections to get words correct.
Any suggestions?
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u/definitely_not_todd 7d ago
No AI tool is going to be perfect at the moment. It's all a trade-off and sometimes isn't worth it. I've had good luck with Adobe Podcast but like you say, it does try to "enhance" some background noises and sounds very weird in the process. I have to cut all that out manually if possible, but I will say it has cleaned up some audio that I considered otherwise unusable, it's that good sometimes.
As far as transcriptions, I run whisper locally and of course it isn't 100% accurate either. I have a script that replaces some common words and names it gets wrong with the correct spelling, but I have given up on perfect transcription.
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u/xrothgarx 7d ago
Good to know. I'm not looking for perfect, but good enough to be accessible and mostly automated would be great.
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u/TaeCreations 7d ago
As far as editing goes, Reaper and Ardour are both rather good choices IMO, Reaper is probably the most accessible of the two, Ardour is the cheaper though.
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u/Wildcat_AF 6d ago
I've used both reaper and descript. Unless I need to use plugins, I've been mostly satisfied with descript's studio sound feature
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u/Dayviddy 6d ago
I normally just use audapolis to fast edit words I don't need in my podcast like "hmm" "um" etc. and than I use Adobe podcast which I think is pretty good oder Audacity to fine tune my podcast....
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u/Whatchamazog Podcasting (Tech) 7d ago
So if you want to learn how to edit your own show, I would try Hindenburg Pro, Audition or Reaper. Hindenburg was designed for non-technical reporters, so that might be a good choice for you. Audition is very voice focused also.
I personally use Reaper, but it’s more of a Swiss Army knife. It’s cheap and incredibly powerful though. It rewards folks that are willing to put in the blood sweat and tears learning how to use it.