How to Prepare Files for a Podcast Editor
Five minutes of preparation on your side routinely saves an hour on ours — and makes the episode sound better.
Most of what slows a podcast edit down happens before the files are sent. None of it is difficult to avoid.
Send separate tracks per speaker
This matters more than anything else on this list. With separate tracks, one person's background noise can be removed without touching anyone else's voice, and levels can be set per person. With a single mixed file, every fix applies to everyone.
Riverside, Zencastr and SquadCast all export separate tracks by default. Zoom does too, but the option is off unless you turn it on.
Do not process anything first
Send the files exactly as they came off the recorder. Noise reduction applied before we receive the file cannot be undone, and consumer noise removal tends to leave artefacts that are harder to fix than the original noise.
Keep the original format
WAV rather than MP3 where you have the choice. If your recording platform only gives you MP3, that is fine — just do not convert it again on the way to us.
Include a sync reference
If audio and video were recorded separately, a clap at the top of the session takes ten seconds and saves a lot of guesswork.
Tell us what to cut
A short note — "skip the bit about the venue from 14:20 to 18:00", "keep the tangent at the end" — is worth more than a long style document. Timestamps are ideal.
Name the files properly
"Sarah-host.wav" and "Guest-Marcus.wav" beat "audio1.wav" and "audio2.wav". It sounds trivial until there are six of them.