Editing concepts

A few ideas explain most of what PodEditor does. If you have edited audio before you can skip this page.

Tracks and clips

A track is a horizontal lane. Each speaker or sound source usually gets its own: host, guest, music, ads. Tracks play at the same time, and PodEditor mixes them together when you export.

A clip (PodEditor also calls it a region) is a piece of audio sitting on a track. The time ruler runs left to right across the top, and the playhead is the vertical line marking where you are.

Edits never change your audio files

When you cut, trim, fade or level a clip, PodEditor only changes which part of the original file the clip plays, and how loud. The imported audio itself is never modified, so any edit can be undone, and a clip you trimmed too short can be dragged longer again.

Delete and Ripple Delete

Removing a clip leaves two things you might want:

Delete (⌫) removes it and leaves a gap of silence where it was.
Ripple Delete (⇧⌫) removes it and slides everything after it earlier to close the gap.

Cutting a mistake out of a conversation is almost always a ripple delete. Take care with ripple on a multitrack session: everything after the cut moves, and linked tracks move with it so the speakers stay in sync.

Linked tracks

With two or more people recorded on separate tracks, a cut on one track has to happen on all of them, or the voices drift out of sync. Link All Tracks (⌘L, or the link button in the transport bar) makes an edit on one track apply to every track.

A linked clip is audio from several tracks that select and move as one. Clicking it selects the whole thing. ⌘-click selects just one track’s part, which is how you mute a single speaker without silencing the room.

Selections

PodEditor has a few kinds of selection, and what a key does depends on which you have:

Clips: click one, or ⇧-click to add more.
A time range: drag on the ruler. Set its ends from the keyboard with I (in point) and O (out point).
Tracks: click track names in the header column.
A marker: click it in the marker lane.

The arrow keys move whatever is selected: clips, a marker, or the playhead when nothing is. Esc clears the selection.

Snapping

When you drag a clip near another clip’s edge, a marker, or the playhead, it jumps to line up exactly. Toggle it with View ▸ Snap to Edges (⌥⌘S), or hold ⌃ while dragging to suspend it once.

Joining and grouping

Two ways to make several clips move as one:

Group (⌘G) ties clips together for now. It is reversible with Ungroup (⇧⌘G), and nothing about the audio changes. Use it while an edit is still in progress.
Join (⌘J) mixes a run of clips down into a single clip. Use it once an edit is finished, such as an ad read cut together from several takes, so it can be moved as one object.

Loudness

Three different things affect how loud your episode is. They do different jobs:

Clip gain raises or lowers one clip. Drag the small handle on the top edge of a clip, or use Region Gain (⇧⌘↑ and ⇧⌘↓).
Auto Level measures how loud the speech is in each selected clip and sets its gain to reach a common target, so different speakers and different recording setups match. It is a starting point you can adjust by hand.
Export loudness is the last step. The Podcast export preset measures the finished mix and aims for −16 LUFS. LUFS is a scale of how loud audio sounds, which is what podcast platforms and listeners care about, rather than how high its waveform peaks. A limiter stops any peak from clipping.

Auto Level evens out the parts; the export target sets the level of the whole.