Episode: 799
Title: HPR0799: Part Four Assembly, Editing the Podcast
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0799/hpr0799.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 02:41:38

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Hello World and welcome to our show on Hacker Public Radio.
This is Part 4 in our series on producing the podcast. We've prepped, recorded and edited
all the segments. It's time to bolt it all together to try to produce something greater
than the sum of its parts. This is the assembly.
The full circle podcast is the companion to full circle magazine, the independent magazine
for the Ubuntu community. Find us at fullcirclemagazine.org forward slash podcast.
Editing the full circle podcast, Part 4, assembly. First, I'd better introduce you to a couple
of radio terms. Bed. A bed is an instrumental track or a continuous sound effect that's used
as background for a content segment. There's one playing under this definition right now.
A bumper is a pre-recorded audio element consisting of voiceover and music that acts as a transition
to or from content segments in the show. Just like this one coming up.
So, the individual segments are edited, post-processed and allocated in the running order.
All the theme music and incidental music, trailers, bumpers, beds and stingers are lined up.
It's just like big model kit laid out ready to be put together. It's time to assemble the show.
I assemble each episode as a multi-track project in audacity as they say in the British parliament,
order, order. The easiest thing to do is order the tracks vertically to start playing in the linear
order in which they appear in the show. Now what I should do is use one track per item instance,
even if I include multiple instances of theme or a bed or a stinger through the show.
This would make it easier to edit any single track without messing up the cues or the timing
anywhere else. However, if I do that, I end up with between 18 and 24 tracks in one edit window,
which invariably results in a lot of scrolling up and down. And since I have to scroll from side
to side across the length of the show, I'd prefer not to be scrolling in both directions if I can
avoid it. So what I often do is use one track per item type. I might put all of Vicki's trailers
on the same track, all the segment titles on another, all the bed music on another. This makes it
easier to see the whole show in one edit window without the vertical scrolling, but the price is paid
in any edits that I make. I cut, trim or insert into one of those tracks, it messes up any linear
cues occurring after the edit. It's possible to drag tracks up and down to reorder them in the
edit window, which I mainly use to bring together related tracks so I can sync the transitions,
the fades, the envelopes and so on. The Mutant Solo buttons are very useful,
temporarily silencing or auditioning tracks or for checking levels or envelope settings.
TimeShift, Align and Snap. The Audacity tool for TimeShift allows you to drag a section
of audio across the timeline to advance or retard when it plays. By default, you get a yellow
highlighter which snaps to the starting end points of other tracks in the timeline. Audacity
assumes you don't want overlapping tracks and want to know where the starts and finishes.
It's fine for a rough cut, but it usually needs manual adjustment to get the timing right.
And I will certainly need to make additional edits for queuing and music breaks while I'm
assembling the show. In Audacity, my assembly tools are Insert Silence, the Trim Tool, Envelope
Tool and Amplify. So what's the secret of comedy? Timing.
It's an old joke I know. Okay, timing or more accurately pacing the show can be tricky and
it's a matter of personal judgment. You may think the shows are too slow or too fast,
or just that Dave Wilkins speaks at what fact to six all of the time. I'm a self-confessed
news junkie, podcast junkie and radio junkie. So I like to think I have a reasonable feel for pace,
for length of segments and whether or not we're going to bore the audience, although I may be
completely wrong about all of those. In the mix, all my music tracks start life just as loud as
the speech tracks, which means in good radio fashion I need to mix down the levels of music and
speech. That means playing in the music at volume for maximum dramatic impact, then take it down
just before the speech begins because we want to hear the vocals. Mostly the theme and incidental
music starts loud, then fades down to run out as a bed under the speech. If the bed is too loud,
it drowns the speech, which is the content. If the bed is so low it becomes a mosquito buzz in
the background, that's just a waste or at worst it becomes irritating. In order to get gradual
fade up and down of music either side of the vocals, I use the envelope tool. By inserting and
dragging envelope edit points, I can set the level over time to give me a sharp or gradual
fade up or down. I may create a complex envelope shape to introduce a segment filled between the
titles in the start of the speech, bed the start of the piece, then fade out to leave the speech running.
Envelope is a non-destructive filter which applies the effect over the original audio. You can cancel
the envelope changes and get back to the source recording at any time, unlike if you apply the
fade filters which are destructive in place. Sometimes I use the fade in and fade out tools when
I know absolutely when a track is coming or going over a fixed time. But if you get it wrong,
you have to delete the track and then re-import the audio back in. At some point you have to stop
editing and go for a final mix down and export the show. That will be in part 5 packaging and posting the show.
Thank you for listening to Hack with Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to C-A-R-O dot-E-N-T for all of this week.