Editing to Increasing the Pace of an Episode

Some podcast episodes feel painfully slow, drawn out, and energy-less because one or more participants is speaking at a very slow pace. As an editor you can help remedy this by editing the audio a bit “tighter” than usual to increase the perceived speed of the episode.

NOTE: If a guest or host is dreadfully boring and slow you won’t be able to completely fix that!

As an editor, here are some things you can do to increase the pace of an episode:

• Shorten long spaces (between question and answer, between an answer and the next question, while someone is silently struggling to find the right words, etc.)
• Umms and stutters (the usual)
• Repeated sentences (usually short sentences like, “Yes, I truly believe that. Yes, I truly believe that.”)
• Removing an entire question and answer (especially when the guest’s answer was essentially the same as their answer to another question)

One final note: You can only do so much in post-production. The “performances” of the hosts and guests will set the pace. Hosts can learn to be more energetic and succinct, etc., but unfortunately guests will be what they are and there’s no changing that.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.