How to Prepare Files for a Podcast Editor
Five minutes of preparation on your side routinely saves an hour on ours. Here is what to send your podcast editor, and what to leave alone.
Most of what slows a podcast edit down happens before the files are sent. None of it is difficult to avoid. This guide covers what a podcast editor needs from you: separate tracks, untouched originals, a sync reference and a short note on what to cut. Five minutes of preparation on your side routinely saves an hour on ours, and the episode sounds better for it.
What a podcast editor needs from you
An editor can only work with what arrives. Clean, separate, clearly named files let us spend the time on the edit itself: pacing, levels, noise and the cuts you asked for. Messy files mean the first hour goes on sorting, guessing and asking questions, and the finished episode is no better for any of it.
- One audio file per speaker, from the same session
- The original recordings, with no processing applied
- WAV files wherever your platform offers them
- A sync clap if audio and video were recorded apart
- A short note with timestamps for anything to cut
- File names that say who is speaking
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, so a fan humming behind the guest ends up being filtered out of the host's voice too.
Riverside, Zencastr and SquadCast all export separate tracks by default. Zoom does too, but the option is off unless you turn it on, so check the recording settings before the session rather than after it. Once the call has ended, a mixed recording cannot be split back into its individual speakers.
If you recorded in one room
In-person shows recorded through a mixer or a field recorder can usually save each microphone to its own file. Check that the option is switched on before you press record. Send every channel you have, even the ones that sound bad, because a noisy track is far easier to fix than a missing one.
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. The same goes for compression, loudness boosts and the EQ presets built into many recording apps.
Keep the original file format
WAV rather than MP3 where you have the choice. WAV keeps everything the microphone captured, while MP3 throws some of it away to save space. If your recording platform only gives you MP3, that is fine. Just do not convert it again on the way to us, because every conversion loses a little more.
| File you have | Send it? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| WAV, as recorded | Yes, first choice | Nothing has been thrown away |
| MP3, as recorded | Yes, if that is all you have | Fine when it is the original |
| MP3 converted from WAV | No, send the WAV | Loses detail for no gain |
| WAV converted from MP3 | No, send the MP3 | A bigger file at the same quality |
| A cleaned or processed export | No, send the original | Processing cannot be undone |
Include a sync reference for video
If audio and video were recorded separately, a clap at the top of the session takes ten seconds and saves a lot of guesswork. Do it on camera, in view of everyone, after all the recorders are running. One sharp clap gives a clear spike in the audio and a clear frame in the picture to line up.
For remote shows, ask each guest to clap once at the start of their own recording. Long sessions can drift slightly between devices, and a reference at the top gives the editor a fixed point to work from when lining the tracks back up across a full hour of conversation.
Tell us what to cut, with timestamps
A short note is worth more than a long style document. Write it the way you would say it: skip the bit about the venue from 14:20 to 18:00, keep the tangent at the end. Timestamps are ideal, because they let us go straight to the moment instead of listening through the whole episode for it.
What to put in the note
- Sections to remove, with a start and end time
- Anything a guest asked to have taken out
- Names, products or terms that must be spelt correctly
- Where the intro and outro music should sit
- Any moment you especially want kept in
Even rough notes help. A note typed on your phone straight after recording is usually enough.
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, or until two episodes arrive in the same week. Put the speaker, their role and the episode in the name, and keep the same pattern every time so no track gets matched to the wrong person.
Sending the files to your editor
Upload everything for one episode into a single folder, with the note inside it. A shared drive link is fine. Check that the link opens without a sign-in before you send it, and leave the files in place until the episode is delivered, in case a track needs to be downloaded again.
Ready to send an episode?
Our podcast editing service starts from $45 per episode, with a turnaround of 48-72 hours per episode. If your files only need cleanup and levelling, podcast audio editing starts from $45 per episode and is turned around in 24-48 hours. Send us your first episode through the contact page and we will take it from there.