Effects and leveling

For what clip gain, Auto Level and export loudness each do, see Editing concepts. This page is the how-to.

Auto Level

Select clips and choose Clip ▸ Auto Level (⇧⌘L). Each clip is brought to a common speech level. With nothing selected it works on the focused track. The status bar says how much was applied. Clip ▸ Remove Auto Level (⌥⇧⌘L) takes it off, and Undo works as usual.

Auto Level is on by default for audio you import, for clips you drag in from a bin or Favorites, and for a take you record, and each can be turned off in Settings ▸ Editing ▸ Auto level, which also covers leveling after a stereo split. A clip you have already adjusted by hand is left alone, so Auto Level never undoes your own work. The target level is in the same settings.

Ducking: lowering music under a voice

Ducking lowers a stretch of audio, usually a music bed under speech, with a ramp down and a ramp back up.

1. Show the gain line: View ▸ Show Gain Line (⌥L).
2. Select the stretch you want lowered, by dragging in the clip’s waveform or marking it with I and O.
3. Drag the clip’s top line down while the selection covers it. PodEditor ramps into the selection, holds at the level you dragged to, and ramps back out.

Without a selection, dragging the same line sets the clip’s flat gain instead. Double-click the line to reset the clip’s gain, or to clear a duck. If several tracks are selected in the track list, one drag ducks all of them. A duck on one side of a linked pair reaches the other side too.

Clip ▸ Duck has the same thing from the menu: Duck, Remove, Copy and Paste act on the in/out span, so you can copy a duck you like and paste it elsewhere. Settings ▸ Editing ▸ Ducking sets how far a duck lowers the audio and how long its ramps are.

Effects on a track

Choose Track ▸ Effects… or open the Effects pane with ⌥E. The pane shows the focused track’s chain. Its add menu lists the Audio Unit effects installed on your Mac, grouped by manufacturer; pick one to put it on the track. A track can hold several, and they run top to bottom in the order shown. Drag to reorder (or use Move Up and Move Down from the right-click menu), bypass one, bypass the whole chain to hear the raw track, or Remove one. Each plug-in’s own window opens from the pane, and its settings are saved with the project.

An effect that is not installed on this Mac stays in the project and is shown as missing, so the settings are not lost; it is skipped when you play or export.

Third-party plug-ins and the macOS security prompt

Apple’s own effects load without a question. For a third-party Audio Unit, macOS may ask whether to let PodEditor use it, with a message such as “Use of the requested Audio Unit(s) requires lowering the security settings for PodEditor”. Choose Lower Security Settings to load it. Declining is fine too: PodEditor reports that the plug-in was not loaded and carries on. macOS decides when this appears, and it can appear once for each plug-in.

Effects and export

Playback and export both run the effects. If an effect keeps ringing after your last clip, such as a delay’s echoes or a reverb, an export keeps rendering for up to five seconds so the tail is not cut off, and stops sooner if it dies away. Your chapters and the episode length still stop where your audio does. A multitrack stems export does not include effects, since it is meant for mixing elsewhere; Export Track… does.