← The Podcast Gauntlet - Throw Down, Discuss, Rise & Shine in Podcasting
The Podcast Gauntlet - Throw Down, Discuss, Rise & Shine in Podcasting
If Editing Your Podcast Takes a LONG TIME, You’re Doing it WRONG!
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Foreign.
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You're listening to the two guys talking podcast next. We've all got incredibly active interests when it comes to podcasting, but what about editing? Well, guys, you, you know, if editing your podcast takes a long time, you're doing it wrong. Or are you? We're going to find out during this session of the Podcast Gauntlet where we throw down, discuss. Rise and shine in podcasting. Greetings, everybody. I'm Mike Wilkerson, one of your hosts.
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And I'm Brian Ensminger, the other one of your hosts.
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Man, this is a great one because there are so many opinions and thoughts and absolutes when it comes to podcast editing and the time that you're going to spend doing it from every single side of every single aisle on planet Earth. It's amazing.
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Yeah, it's like you said, there's multiple thoughts, but especially when somebody is new and getting started or if they're contracting with an editor now they're starting to think, well, should it really take that long? There's a lot of thoughts around, how long should it take to edit my episode? And of course the answer is 10 minutes.
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Right?
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Right, Mike? 10 minutes.
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Everything start to finish, especially for a 45 minute podcast. Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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No, that's actually not accurate. What this all comes down to is the expectation or the rumor mill versus what is reality. And what I hope to do inside of this episode of the Podcast Gauntlet is to give everybody in just about every perspective of aisle, some dose of reality when it comes to podcast editing. I can remember vividly when we started editing the 24podcast.com effort way back when. This is now 20 years ago, guys. It felt like forever. The difference, of course, was we had to get it done. We would watch the program on Monday, we'd capture the program either on Monday evening or Tuesday evening, and then by Thursday evening, we had to have the
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program done and out to the audience
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so that they'd have it for Friday, Saturday and Sunday to. To listen and interact with it. But then also so we could get back to the next episode that was on Monday. That's one of the very few reasons that I am a giant proponent of
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doing things weekly, because you don't really
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have an option in the case of a television program, if you get maybe two episodes behind, you're really starting to dance with the devil when it comes
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to people being able to not only
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continue their, their attention span because they're on your ass like, hey, man, where's the episode? There were several times where either Brian or Tony or Chris or Myself. We just had other commitments and so we couldn't finish the episode in time for the next one.
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It only happened maybe two or three
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times across the entire span of those seasons. But it did happen.
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And when instantly we did it, we got instant reprisal from the audience. That was not good. What we always tried to tame it with was we never said anything to the account of, well, hey guys, you know, doing this free for you to takes a long time and you're just
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going to have to shut up and bear it. We never said that.
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But it is kind of the feeling
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where when we're capturing a podcast that for a 43 minute program usually took
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about two hours, maybe two and a
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half hours every single episode. That's a lot of podcast content to
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edit and even just get that done before Thursday. We always try to get it done by Thursday early evening.
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So 6pm Central.
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That was a Herculean effort because of what we had decided to format inside
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of the 24 podcast. And guys, remember, the 24 podcast is not your average podcast.
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It's not hitting the record button. A couple of guys yap into microphones and you hit the stop button and
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then you publish the.
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That's not what was going on with the 24 podcast. In fact, it's never been that way with the 24 podcast because there's expectations from the host and I to be able to generate that program so that there is this other worldly simply can't get it somewhere else quality to it. That's the whole point of making things on the Internet is you want it to be engaging, compelling, and unlike anything else you can get somewhere else. And so to do that, it would take lots and lots of time to do it. That trend continues with even the most rudimentary podcast now, because while you may have now figured it out to where you can sit down and like Brian and I do, hit the recording button and then hit the stop button when we're done. And then, by the way, there now is a publish button inside the tool that we're using. We both know that especially because our businesses are podcast editing centric, we want to edit this shit, right?
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And so there's our reason for it needing to take whatever time it's going to take. And based on Brian and my skill sets, we take as much time as we need to to make a good solid product with as much time as we have in a reasonable amount of time. Yeah, and those, as long as you remember those three things, those are the tenants that will guide you inside of podcast editing. But there is not one quick solution or answer to the concept of my God, it takes me or how much time should it take me to edit my podcast? The answer is not the same for every program. The answer is not, oh, it doesn't take any time at all, or yeah, I listen at five times speed to edit my podcast. You don't, you don't edit listening at five times speed. In fact, I think people that edit
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at 2 times speed are likely missing
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some reasonably relevant things. 2, 2 times listening is, is not trivial, especially if you're listening to someone like myself. Brian's probably in the middle of the cadence when it comes to speaking, but if you start adding that on vocabulary and the spills between a variety of guests inside of a program, listening faster does not just simply mean you're going to get the program done faster, it means you're likely going to make mistakes faster as well.
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Yeah, and I think the one message I would like to share is editing takes as long as editing takes. And it's a combination of your skill or the host's skill, or the host and the guest or whatever that combination is as an editor, the software that you're using and how easy that is, the scope of work that you're doing. And honestly, it can vary pretty widely. And I saw a post on, I think Facebook yesterday or today where somebody was talking about how their client wanted a one hour video episode edited and ready to go in two to two and a half hours. So this is, they stop recording, it's 45 minutes to an hour. They want this thing edited and ready to go. But that also includes the full edit, the audio version, which is, I think, the same edit, listening through for show notes, timestamps, clips, shareable social media assets, all of that stuff. They wanted everything turned around in two hours. And my answer was this. That's impossible. You don't get it. You, you don't get a deep edit of a one hour video episode in two hours. You don't get high quality show notes so you can talk about the scope of work. Do they want less work done? Do they want to put more people on the project, which is probably still not possible? Do they want to outsource some of it to AI and just go with the results they get, Just hit a button and take the clips you get. So there are ways that you can address that. But the reality is, even just a straight through video edit, unless you're just going to do top and tail and nothing else that's going to take A lot longer. But for those of you that are watching, you going, well, how long should it take? It can vary widely. I have one client that I work with where a 20 minute episode recently took an hour and a half. That's about right. But I've had some where the guest isn't very well spoken. And so it takes three hours to do a 20 to 30 minute episode. That's way longer than it should have taken. But that's because the quality of the work that I'm doing is commensurate with what I charge and so I'm able to take that time. Conversely, I have another client that I work with where I've got a show that goes out on terrestrial radio and so it comes through already having been run through Descript with a line edit that's made by a, a really high quality producer. And then most of my job is fixing bad edits and that can take anywhere from two to three hours, all the way up recently to six hours to finish that one episode. Now, this is not a complaint. I get paid for my time, so I'm happy to do it. But the reality is, part of that is the episodes I was working on and part of it is because they changed software. I'm not as good as that software. But it's also not as good as fast as the software I was using before. So it all works together. And the fact is, if it takes a long time, you could be doing it wrong. You might need to adjust the scope of work that you're trying to do, or you might just realize this is how long it takes to put out the kind of quality that I want to do. And if, especially if you're a professional editor, that all goes down to what clients are you targeting and are you charging appropriately for the kind of work. I'm not talking about milking clients, I'm talking about can you give them the quality of work and still have a little bit of margin to feed your family and do it and get it done? Because it takes time to do a high quality edit. And I'm sorry guys, AI is not there yet. It may never be there, but it's not there yet.
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Yeah, and it's not going to get there. There's only been one client that's left me for AI and it's simply because it was an easier option that they found at the same time that they were hunting for programs. And so the problem is that they're not going to have anything to compare it to. They're just going to have what was the AI available solution first versus having a real person doing it with the ability to listen to what they want, as opposed to hopefully interpreting a prompt appropriately and then pooping out whatever it is that they're expecting. That's a guess, not a tell. But from watching the stream of consciousness of what happens, especially inside of podcast editing, I think that's what you're going to see is that it can do and help with many different tasks. But can it take your raw audio stream and instantly poop out a finished program with your top, your bottom, your mids, your advertisements in between, your live reads, wherever you designate? No, and I don't think that it will. There will always be a someone that's got to at least proctor the thing, or that has to go back and then review the thing before you send it off to get your paycheck. It's just. It's just the way that it works there. There were a couple things that also came up while you were speaking that I want to make sure we also address. The first one is I don't care. Anytime you're speaking to a customer of, at least, in my opinion, any level, even if it's where you're new, and gosh, you're scraping the bottom of the barrels for work because you've got to get some provenance. You've got to get. You'll say something to the effect of, well, the edit will probably take me at least two hours if your program is an hour, but just know that it may take longer. And if you hear the words at any point, whether it's the short end or the long end, I don't care. I tell you to run valiantly from wherever the hell you're at and go find another potential customer. And it's not because you can now
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potentially get in and get on the
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really great side of a deal, which you potentially could absolutely. If it takes you an hour and 15 minutes to get a job done, you're being paid for three hours. Hey, score for you, right?
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That's awesome.
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The problem is that you have to remember Brian hit it squarely on the head, where very often podcasting is with a series of different guests. You'll have the host, and hopefully, but
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not all the time, by any stretch of any kind, will the host always have their A game in regard to actually speaking? Brian and I have now done the podcast gauntlet enough that Brian and I know both of our picadillos. And so if we have to edit the program, we're able to edit the program. But more importantly, when we lay down the program, we've got it down to
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a chemistry set where I can feel
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his ebb and flows inside of the discussion. I know when to pick up, Brian knows when to pick up. We know what kind of distance we want from the start of the podcast to the end of the podcast. And so that ebb and flow and putting on the front ends and the
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back ends, usually it'll take a good,
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solid, squared box of time because we know how to speak, because we take the time to try and improve our amara, you know, filler crutch bullshit that we do inside of the programs. We actively do that. And so you have less time to work inside of the window, which means if you're working for a client, that means that the profit that you're making on the episode goes up. And that's awesome. The problem is the other side of that coin where if the host doesn't have their A game on every single episode, which they don't.
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No.
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Even someone that's been podcasting as long as Brian and I, there are episodes where, you know, sunspot, man, something went
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wrong, something's just not working.
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And so you've got that. But then you've also got where if you are having on guests, you know, guests, people that you've never talked to before, except maybe in a phone call or a brief video chat or something else, when you get them engaged in long form content discussion, all bets are off on how they actually speak. Yeah, all bets. Every single bet, every bet you've ever even contemplated all goes completely out the window. And so remember your guesstimate of it's going to take me approximately two and a half hours to do your 45 minute podcast and you're going to hear the obligatory, it's going to take how long to do that podcast? It's only an hour and 15 minutes. Well, yeah, that's giving you a little bit of wiggle room, but then it's also just being reasonable. Again, if we go back to the concept of how fast are you listening to the podcast? I like to actively listen to my podcast while I'm editing and I teach all of the editors that I train to listen at one speed. That's not because I want you to waste time. It's because I want you to actually hear what they're saying. There can't be a time where we're getting four and five projects back where they're like, hey, I'm just wondering, did you guys go to sleep while you were editing or what the hell is this? There can't be that.
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And there certainly can't be that in an ongoing capacity because you decided that two and a half times listening was awesome that afternoon. You can't do that. Or rather you can do that. But remember, if you do choose to do that, you have to pay for that. And usually what that means is a lost customer. Because what you can't screw up as a podcast editor is the podcast editing. It's amazing how many people forget about those things.
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It's interesting that you bring up the 2X because I used to be a 2X editor and I'm not convinced that I missed stuff. But one of the things that I found was that when I edited, started editing at 1x, I started making the dialogue breathe a little bit more. I didn't cut it as tight. I allowed a little bit more time for people to think, which is not something I was doing when I was editing 2x. I should probably also mention for people that are wondering, like, how long does it take to do this show? This is approximately a 20 to 30 minute episode that we do typically. And for me, editing the show, setting up the multicam, doing the multicam edit, then doing the audio edit, and then creating the two social media clips or the reels that we create out of this is probably three hours per episode. And then Mike does all the show notes. So if you start thinking about doing an hour long episode, obviously you don't have to edit in the same style that I do. But think about that could be five to six hours to do a good high quality video edit. Now you could of course just do top and tail and fix the audio and go with it and leave all the ums in. But that's not the editing that we do. And so if you're thinking about, well I want to do a video podcast and now I want a separate audio version as well. We can talk about workflow if you want me to help you work on the workflow, but it's gonna take time. Cause this we're talking like five to six times the amount of audio time to do the edit and those couple of clips. Not a complaint, that's just the reality that you might be looking at. If you wanna do this, are there ways to go faster? Are there ways you could use AI? Possibly, but I've not found an AI edit yet that I've been happy with and I find that I spend more time fixing them typically than I would if I just did it myself.
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I 100% agree with that. The other thing that I always tell people is regardless of the tool, what kind of offerings do they have when
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it comes to changing out the edit that the AI automated system does?
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Yeah, because if that feels like working with a potato, then it's shit. It has to be something that helps you.
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It shouldn't be something that dissuades you. So you just kind of go, ah, I guess I'll just use what it gave me. That's not a tool. That is an off ramp to doing something easier. And guys, I'm not telling you that everything that is easier is shit, but I am telling you that very often you have to put in the work. Yeah, guys, it's just work. Your dreams of avarice that include trying to get over on seven clients where you're only working for six hours across what should be a 20 hour workload, you are kidding yourself when it comes to editing it. It does not work that way. At least it doesn't. It's never worked for me effectively. Especially with legitimate clients that realize that you are doing a job that not only have they probably tried and failed terribly at, but that you could just do it better because of how much experience, how much in the way of either equipment or tools or plugins or your doodads that you've gotten to help you edit, you've actually engaged in. All that stuff compiles into this ball of energy and time that you then have to throw at the job that usually the client simply doesn't have. And so remember, if you start getting people that are pounding you about, well, wait a minute, why is it going to cost so much? Guys, you have to remember that the ball of energy and time and profit that you're making has to be a time of ball and energy and profit that you're actually making something on. Otherwise you are eating your tail. You don't want to eat your tail inside of podcast editing.
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Yeah, you don't want to forget that, especially if you're a professional editor. You exist within a marketplace and while you might be able to make significantly more profit than other people for a while, in the end the marketplace will normalize. And if you're taking shortcuts, either other people will find those shortcuts and be able to take advantage of them, or you'll get found out. The quality of your work will suffer whatever happens. And so just remember, you don't have to price yourself based on everybody else, but you do work in a marketplace where people don't want to pay more than the value that they receive. They want to receive at least the amount of value that they paid for, if not more. And your job is to make what's valuable to them worth what they're paying for you and make sure that that's valuable enough to cover what you're doing to give it to them.
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There's actually two last things. The first thing is. Sorry. No, that's okay. I. I love concepts like this inside of our program, Brian, because it, it, it fuels the, the passionate parts of everything that you and I do inside of this industry. I can remember specifically interacting inside of many of the forums, in particular Facebook, where there would be four or five different comments about talking about costs, and inevitably someone will just say, ah, just go to Fiverr. And that always drive me insane. Because again, as a legitimate podcast editing entity outlet, whether it's my skill sets or the skill sets of Those over@editorcore.com, the bottom line is that I know it takes more than even just $5 or $25 that you would find via somebody at say, like a fiverr that will say, I'll edit your podcast for 25 bucks. You, sir, are an idiot. Not only are you taking down everything inside of the podcast editing industry, you're taking down podcasting because you're offering up an availability where someone legitimate that is looking for a podcast editor is going to go and use you because you're cheap. They're going to go, wait a minute, that other dude wanted $350 for a podcast episode. This guy will do it for 25 bucks. Geez, even if he says 100, we still got that much more. That's what I'm talking about when it comes to something like a Fiverr, an upwork or something where there is a discounted availability, where clearly not only is it not being done by someone who is an English first speaker, it's taking out the industry of podcasting and podcast editing out at the knees. Because there is no way that reasonable expectations could ever be reinserted inside of that chemistry set without some sort of upheaval. There's no way. The last thing I wanted to talk about too, was essentially the business triangle. For those of you that have forgotten what the business triangle is, it's a triangle that has three sides. The sides are cost, speed and quality. And you, sir or madam, get to pick two of them.
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And no joke, if you remember that
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as a podcast editor, that that's how any legitimate business realizes how podcasting works, everything will be pretty smooth. The problem, of course, is that your
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ears start to perk up anytime anybody says, you know, I've got a podcast and I've been looking for somebody to edit it. Okay, guys, we all get it. The hair on the back of your ear starts to prick up and you're like, very interesting. Okay. And you can start to feel the drool coming down the corner of your mouth.
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Interesting, really.
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You know, I'm a podcast editor and. And now the bets are all off, right?
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Yeah.
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So you have to remember those fundamentals are going to. Not only will they help you, they will severely cost you if you do not entail them and roll them into what you're doing not only as a podcast editor, but also as a podcaster. It may be that this episode gets way more in the way of podcast editors looking at it, but I hope. And actually, that's a great call to the audience. If you are a podcaster and you have found this video and you've gotten this far along inside of it and you found some value, I would very much like for you to use the comments section here inside of the video presentation, but then also over at our website. Over@podcast Gauntlet.com, click on the contact button, fill out the quick web form, and tell us what you're thinking in regard to podcast editing, but also the value that's associated with podcast editing.
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Because, guys, regardless of whether you're a
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podcaster or you're a podcast editor or anybody in between, you have to remember, the faster you kick the legs out from underneath podcast editing value or podcasting value, everybody in the industry fails. And again, we're looking forward to hearing from you. And we have many more episodes in regard to podcast editing inside of the podcast Gauntlet. Again, it's where Brian and I live and breathe inside of the podcasting industry. Look for the links inside the description here, but then also at the show notes over@podcast Gauntlet.com until next time. I'm Mike Wilkerson, one of your hosts.
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And I'm Brian. My quote was my bottom dollar and sminger. And I'm the other one of your host hosts.
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Thanks for watching and listening. We'll see you next time. There are many tasks involved inside of Posse. Really? Really.
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It's. It switched interfaces on me. What a mess.