Exporting and mastering

What you hear in the editor is what every export makes. The cuts, the pauses, the clips, the volumes, the Polish and the removed silence land in the same places whether you take the edit into Audition, Reaper, Audacity, another editor or straight to a finished file.

Export ▾

At the top right of the editor. Each choice opens a box with its own options, and nothing is written until you press the button in it. If the files it would write are already there, it asks before replacing them.

…to a mix

One audio file of the finished edit.

Option	Choices
Name and folder	The episode’s name, in the episode’s folder, to start.
Format	mp3 (to start), wav, flac, m4a, ogg or opus.
Bitrate	128k, 192k (to start), 256k or 320k, for mp3, m4a, ogg and opus.
Sample format	16-bit, 24-bit (to start) or 32-bit float, for wav.

Export & open writes it and opens it.

…to Audition

An Audition multitrack session with the cuts made, clip by clip, on each person’s track.

Export markers: your markers, on the session’s timeline.
Add a marker at each scene division.
Mark the places worth a listen: the export’s own checks, each a marker named “Listen: …”. A cut right against a word, a voice that comes back louder or quieter after a cut, or a pause at a cut much shorter than the talk around it.
Copy the audio next to the session, so the folder can be moved or handed to someone else as it is.

If a session with that name is already there, the old one is kept as a backup. Inserted clips go on a track of their own, Clips.

…to Reaper

A Reaper project with the cuts made, one track per person, and a Clips track for any clips you’ve inserted. Mark the places worth a listen works as it does for Audition.

…to Audacity

An Audacity project with one track per person, the cuts already made, and your markers on a label track. Open it in Audacity and save it as an Audacity project. Until you do, keep the folder named like the project with _data on the end next to it.

…to one file per speaker (any DAW)

One WAV per person, all starting at zero and all the same length, so any editor lines them up by dropping them in. Your markers go in each file and in a Markers.csv beside them. The box shows how long they’ll be and how much room they need before you start.

…to a review copy

For a host or client to sign off on the cut. Two files: the transcript as a document with every cut left on the page and struck through, and the mix with a short tick at each cut. The times in both match, so “put back the bit at 12:40” points at the same moment in either.

One recording, several episodes

Right-click a word where the next episode should start and choose Split episode here. Everything after that entry becomes a new episode in the show, on the same recordings, with its edits, markers and scenes, and each one exports on its own. Join with the previous episode or Join with the next episode, at the top of the Outline, puts them back together.

Continue to mastering

Beside Export. There’s nothing to ask: it mixes the edit to a full-quality WAV in the episode’s folder and opens Master with it loaded, the episode’s tags filled in, and the loudness target and peak ceiling your show last mastered with. Whatever you change in Master is kept with the episode.

If you’d rather polish in Audition, Reaper or Audacity first, export there instead, then master the mix your editor renders with Master a file… on the show page.

Master

Master sets the loudness, catches peaks, and writes a tagged MP3 for publishing and a WAV to keep.

Episode

Title is the only thing it needs. Track (the episode number), Year, Made by, Album, Genre and Artwork come from the episode, and you can change any of them here.

Targets

Setting	To start	What it does
Loudness target	−16 LUFS	How loud the finished episode is. −16 suits most podcast apps.
True peak target	−1.5 dBTP	The highest any peak may reach.
Loudness range	11 LU	How much the level may move between quiet and loud stretches.
True-peak safety limiter	On	Catches peaks that go over after the loudness is set.
Limiter ceiling	−1.5 dBTP	Follows the true peak target while they match.
Max correction passes	10	If limiting pulls the loudness off target, it adjusts and tries again, up to this many times.
Sample rate	44.1 kHz	Or 48 kHz.
MP3 bitrate	192 kbps	128, 160, 192, 256 or 320.
WAV bit depth	24-bit	16, 24 or 32.

Each show remembers the settings its last master used, and the next episode starts from them. Use the standard settings puts the ones above back.

Also write a transcript

Also write a transcript of the finished episode writes .srt and .vtt captions and a .txt beside the MP3, for your podcast host or your website. Each line is named for who’s speaking. From Continue to mastering, it’s written from your edit, so it adds almost no time. For a file opened with Master a file…, it transcribes the whole master, which takes longer.

The result

Master episode asks where to put the files, then shows a PASS or FAIL: the loudness and peak it measured against your targets. A FAIL doesn’t hold anything back. Both files are written either way, and the result says what was off, so you can decide whether it matters.

Chapters

Chapters… on Master. Chapters go into the MP3, and podcast apps show them as titles listeners can skip between.

Play the episode, and Add chapter at playhead (or M) where a new part starts. Space plays and pauses; −10s and +10s skip.
Type a time (90, 1:30 or 1:02:03) and a title on each row, or Set from playhead.
Times are whole seconds, because that’s what the MP3 stores. Two chapters in the same second would collide, and the table warns you.
Most podcast apps expect the first chapter at 0:00.

Done → Master takes you back. There’s nothing to save; chapters are kept with the episode.