Audio Editing & Best Practices
Hi all, I have a few questions pertaining to editing podcast audio.
- When cutting out sections of an audio clip i.e. loud sounds, or a noise in the background, is it best practice to re-join the numerous segments into 1 full clip again?
- If re-joining the audio segments how do you deal with overlapping audio as a result? One audio clip of the host and another separate audio clip of the guest.
- When exporting out what is the preferred extention? mp3, mp4, m4a, etc.
- Where do you find royalty-free music for intro/outro?
I've been just been exporting as is but I wonder if that's really the best practice.
Thanks!
Re: the editing questions, I think you're asking about whether to move the timing of clips after removing something. It really depends on what you're cutting out and why. When I cut, I want the recording to sound natural afterwards. So, if it will sound odd with a gap in there, I'll pull the later clip back in time to close the gap. If I removed a noise that happened between two words of a sentence, it might sound unnatural to remove the gap, so I would just leave the silence. I'm using a DAW (Ableton, in my case) that automatically fades clips out and in whenever I cut out something out, and it will also crossfade when I overlap clips, and those two features prevent clipping artefacts from appearing in the end product.
You want to avoid having overlapping audio in cases like this, so try to do the overlap using silence from both clips. Ideally (though not financially practical for everyone), you'll be recording with separate mics for each speaker, so that you can isolate different inputs on different channels.
Yes, like when you remove a section of a clip I was asking if it's best practice to rejoin the now edited clips back into one. But it seems that doesn't matter which is fine
The most important thing is that it sounds good when you play it back rather than being a distraction or annoying.
I don't quite follow the first two questions but I'll answer the last two.