Editing an episode

Opening an episode opens its transcript. Every line is one person, one stretch of speech, with the time it was said. You edit by striking the lines that go. Press F1 any time for the full list of keys.

Striking a line

Click a line’s words and it’s struck through: still there to read, but out of the episode. Click again to bring it back. The ✕ at the end of each entry strikes the whole entry, and turns into ↺ on one you’ve cut. Clicking the time or the name beside a line only selects it.

• ↑ and ↓ move between lines. D, Delete or Backspace strikes or restores the selected one.
• Press on a line and drag down: every line you cross gets the opposite of the first one. Dragging down a column of ✕ does the same for whole entries. Hold the drag near the top or bottom edge and the transcript scrolls with you.
• Ctrl+Z undoes any edit, and Ctrl+Shift+Z redoes it.
• H, or Edit > Hide struck lines, takes the struck lines off the page when it gets busy. While they’re hidden, ↑ and ↓ skip over them.
• Edit > History lists every change to the episode, oldest first. Click one to go back to right after it.

Nothing is ever thrown away. A struck line stays in the episode, ready to come back.

Long turns

Every word can be cut. When someone talks for minutes, their turn is one entry, broken into rows with small dots between them where everybody stops talking for a moment.

• Click a word to strike or restore just that word. You hear the join right away.
• Drag across words to strike exactly those words.
• Press and hold on a word to strike or restore its whole row.
• Cut, beside an entry, strikes or restores the whole entry. Words you struck by hand are remembered, so bringing the entry back gives you exactly what you had.
• Hover a dot to see how long that pause is.
• ▶ on the entry plays it as edited, so you can hear the join before you trust it.

Which pauses get a dot is set in Aa, under Pauses: Long, Medium (to start) or Short. It only changes where rows break, never what you can cut.

Setting a pause

Sometimes a cut lands too tight and two sentences run into each other, or a pause runs long. To set it:

• Right-click a seam and choose Pause length. Type how long it should play, or use -250 ms and +250 ms, and click Set. Shorter takes it out of the recorded silence and never cuts into a word; longer fills the rest with room tone. Back to automatic undoes it. Right-clicking the first or last word of a piece offers the same: Pause before this word… or Pause after this word….
• For a pause before a whole entry, right-click a speaker’s name and choose Add a pause before this entry…. Type a length in milliseconds (500 to start, anywhere from 50 to 10,000) and click Add pause.

The pause is filled with that person’s own room tone, so their mic’s background carries on instead of dropping to dead silence. If their track has no quiet stretch that long, the pause is silent, and the menu says so before you add it.

The pause shows as a small pause 500 ms mark in front of the line. Click it to change the length or remove it. Every export puts it in the same place.

Inserting a clip

An intro, an outro, an ad or a stinger can go into the episode between lines. It plays on its own, never over anyone talking.

• Right-click a speaker’s name for Insert a clip before this entry… or …after this entry…, or right-click a seam or the first or last word of a piece for the same thing at that spot.
• Pick one of the show’s recent clips, Choose a favorite…, or From a file…. The clip is matched to the level of the voices so it doesn’t jump out.
• It shows as a ♪ mark in front of the line. Click it to set the Silence before and Silence after (500 ms each to start), Remove the clip, or Save as a favorite….

If someone is still talking at the spot you picked, the clip waits until they finish, and the menu says where it will land. The mix, the stems, and the Audition and Reaper sessions all have it in the same place, on a track of its own called Clips in the sessions.

Favorite clips

File > Favorite clips… keeps the clips you use again. Each one has its name, its silence before and after, tags to find it by, and which shows see it. Set Goes in by itself to At the start of every episode or At the end of every episode and it goes into every episode of those shows. Replace audio… swaps the recording and keeps the settings.

Listening

The bar at the top of the editor holds all of it: the scene you’re in, with arrows up and down to the one before or after; ⏮ ▶ Play scene ⏭; the speed; and the volume. Hover any of them for its key. The word being said lights up as it plays. Speed and volume apply to everything that plays, and are remembered for each episode. None of these keys do anything while you’re typing in a box, like Search or a scene note.

What the editor plays is exactly what a mix export holds: every track at its volume in the Mix, kept just under clipping. Mastering then brings the whole episode to your show’s loudness, and the Master screen lets you hear that before you export. The meter at the bottom of the right-hand strip shows how loud the mix is while it plays (green is comfortable, amber is getting hot, red is close to clipping), and each track in the Mix has its own meter beside its volume.

The editor plays each person’s recording from wherever it lives. If they’re on a drive that isn’t plugged in, the editor says so at the top. Connect it and click Look again.

Right-click a word

• Play from here plays from that word to the end of the episode, as it will export, until you press Stop or Esc. It’s first in every right-click menu on the transcript: a speaker’s name, a seam, a pause or a clip too.
• Correct the spelling of “…”… changes how a word is written: Just here, or Everywhere in this episode. Tick Remember for this show and every episode the show transcribes from now on spells it that way too. Only the words change; the audio stays as it is.
• Add marker drops a marker at that word. See Markers.
• Split episode here makes everything after that entry a new episode in the show, on the same recordings, with its edits, markers and scenes. It asks first and says where the new episode starts. Join with the previous episode or Join with the next episode, at the top of the Outline, puts them back together.
• On the first or last word of a piece: the pause and clip choices above.

Right-click a speaker’s name

On any line, for that entry’s menu:

• Play from here, from the start of the entry.
• Cut entire entry and Keep entire entry.
• Add a pause before this entry…
• Insert a clip before this entry… and Insert a clip after this entry…
• Rename…, which opens the Mix with that person’s name ready to change. The new name shows on every line at once.

Clean up

The Clean up panel, on the right-hand strip to start with, is one list in time order of everything you might want to cut, so one pass through the episode deals with all of it. The chips at the top pick what it lists:

• Fillers: every “um”, “uh”, “like”, “you know” and repeated word (“I I”, “the the”). Pick which words to list under Filler words.
• Said to cut: every place somebody on the recording said to cut, found with the show’s cut phrases. Edit cut phrases changes them, and Previous and Next step through the list (N and Shift+N do the same with the panel closed). Ignore takes one off the list, and the link at the bottom brings it back. The number on the Clean up icon is how many are still to deal with.
• Laughs and Other sounds: the laughs, and the breaths, coughs and other noises. They’re listed even when Aa > Sounds hides them in the transcript; a click on one of those goes to the line next to it.
• Faint: words and sounds far quieter than their speaker usually is, such as somebody else’s voice heard faintly on a mic. The slider says how much quieter, and only changes what is listed.

Fillers and Said to cut are on to start; Laughs, Other sounds and Faint are off until you turn them on.

Each row has Play, which plays it as the edit has it, and, except for Said to cut, Cut, which strikes it and plays the join. Press Cut again to put it back. A said-to-cut row has no Cut, because only you know what to strike: it reads as handled once your edit covers it.

Fillers are different in one way. The ones with a moment of quiet on both sides come first: they lift out without touching the words either side. The rest run into the next word, so listen to the join, which plays as you cut. On a filler, Mark drops a marker so you can find it in Audition, Reaper or Audacity and take it out by ear.

• Cut all shown strikes everything the list is showing, and Mark all shown marks all the fillers in it. Both ask first and tell you the number, and Ctrl+Z puts them back.
• Click a row to go to it. Right-click a row to go there and hear it, starting a second before, since the join is what you’re listening for.

The list matches words, not meaning, so read a “like” before you cut it. And mm-hmm is often a yes.

Where people talk over each other

When someone says something under another person’s turn, the transcript shows it where it was said:

• A chip: a short remark (under two seconds over the other person) drawn inside their line, at the word where it was said. Click it to strike it or bring it back.
• Columns: two or more people talking at once for longer. For those seconds the transcript shows a column per person, in the order they came in, with a new row wherever somebody starts. Every line in it strikes, plays and takes a marker like any other. Chips said there sit beside their row, in the margin or, with chips in the text, in a column of the block’s own. ▶ at the top plays everyone in it.

] and [ jump to the next and previous place people talk over each other, and Tab steps through the chips in the entry you’re on. Aa > Overlapping speech > As separate lines turns all of this off, for the plain transcript.

Moving a voice a little earlier or later is a job for Reaper. A Reaper or Audition export marks each place people talk at once, Crosstalk: and who, unless you’ve cut one of the voices there.

Scenes

Scenes split a long episode into parts you can work through one at a time. Scene 3 of 12 at the top says where you are, with arrows up and down either side to move between them. Click it for the Outline, which lists every scene.

• Shift+↑ and Shift+↓: previous and next scene.
• X splits the scene at the selected line.
• F2, or click the heading, to rename it.
• Edit > Delete all lines in this scene… and Restore all lines in this scene… do the whole scene at once, after asking.

The box under a scene’s heading is a note for the scene, and it lands as a marker at the scene’s start when you export to Audition.

View > Whole episode shows every scene in one long page, with the scene headings in it, instead of one scene at a time. Scene 3 of 12 at the top and the Outline follow what’s at the top of the screen.

The scrollbar

The transcript’s scrollbar has small marks on it: your markers, search results, and, in the whole-episode view, where each scene starts. Hover a mark to see what it is, and click it to go there.

Panels

The icon strips on each side open the panels. Hover an icon for its name.

Episode stats, a button at the top right, opens who talks how much and when, crosstalk, the longest turns and the most-used words, updated as you edit.

Searching with a client’s note. “cut where she says the engine is failing, captain” still finds “The engines are failing, captain.” Matches that are only close are tagged close. Put a time in the search, like “around 12:30 the dog story”, and it only looks near that point. A time on its own takes you to what was said then.

Arrange them how you like. Drag a panel by its name, tab or icon onto another panel’s title bar to make it a tab, onto the top or bottom half of one to stack them, or along an icon strip to give it its own place. Drag the edges to resize. View > Reset panel layout puts everything back.

The Map

M, or View > Show map, opens the Map above the transcript: the scene drawn as one lane per person. Hover a block for its words, click it to go there, and click the ruler to play from that point. Ctrl+wheel zooms in around the pointer, down to a few seconds across; zoomed in, the wheel or a drag on the lanes moves along. A double-click, or Fit, shows the whole scene again.

Markers

Right-click a word and choose Add marker to drop a marker there, with a title and a note. Right-click past the last word of a line to put it at the end of the line. The buttons in the marker box drop common ones in one click: trim here, re-record, clean up, needs music and so on. Change the list in Settings > Editing. Markers ride into your Audition or Reaper session and into the stems, so “fix this” lives where you’ll fix it.

Click a ⚑ to edit or delete it; drag it to move it. In the Markers panel, Active lists the markers an export will write, and All also shows the ones on lines you’ve cut.

The Mix panel

• Tracks. Each person’s color, their name, which you can change right there, and a volume knob with a ▶ beside it that plays five seconds of them on repeat while you set it. Match levels sets every volume so the voices sit together, at a level that sounds right as the mix plays, and says where the speech landed (“Speech at about -20 LUFS”). Mastering still sets your show’s own loudness. To line up anyone who started recording at a different time, use Episode > Align tracks… (see Align). Tracks start in alphabetical order; drag one by the dotted handle at its left to move it, or click the handle and press Alt+Up or Alt+Down. The Map and your Audition and Reaper sessions follow the order you set, and each track keeps its color.
• Polish. The sparkle icon on a track makes a cleaned-up copy of it in the background, with the noise and the sound of the room taken down. The original is kept. Once it’s made, the icon is a switch: on, that track plays and exports from the polished copy; off, from the original. Right-click it to Polish again or Delete the polished copy to get the disk space back. Settings > Sound > Polish every track after preparing makes every track’s copy as soon as an episode is transcribed, so switching it on is instant. It works best with a graphics card; without one it uses a lighter cleanup.
• Reading. How finely long turns are split into pieces you can cut.
• Silence. Shortens long pauses across the episode: Between speakers (pauses over 500 ms become 300 ms to start) and Within one speaker (over 800 ms become 400 ms), with a per-track override. The line underneath says how much it took out.

An episode made from an Audition session keeps its tracks in that session, so its Mix has only the Reading setting.

When someone else changed it

If the same episode is changed in another window while it’s open, the next save stops and asks: Keep my edits or Load the newer version. Nothing is overwritten until you choose.