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(By Troy Price) I finally found a YouTube channel that I like. I have binged all of his episodes and enjoyed most everything he has done, and probably will do, on YouTube. You can imagine how excited I was when he announced that he was starting a podcast! In addition to his 15-minute video every week, he was planning an additional hour-long podcast to enjoy. I downloaded and subscribed and have withheld my opinion for the first six or seven episodes, knowing everyone improves with practice.
Now, I do have one recommendation for him, and any other podcaster that uses Skype or other VoIP solutions for remote recordings of their guests. Edit the glitches out of your recording. Leaving the recorded glitches in your released podcast demonstrates a lack of patience and provides the listener with a jarring opportunity to disengage with your message.
Through trial and error I have discovered a reliable way to manually remove these glitches and can share my process with you. First, let me tell you what those glitches are. Most of the time VoIP services work perfectly. However, sometimes there is a delay between parts of the audio reaching your recorder. Sometimes a glitch sounds like a bit of quiet in the middle of a word – just a pause before the spoken words continue. Sometimes the VoIP software fills in that quiet space and the glitch sounds like a tinny and robotic tone. When you listen to a podcast with a glitch you are reminded every time it happens that you are listening to a digital file played on an electronic device, rather than being part of a conversation. You should not want that in your episode.
It is easy to fix each kind of glitch; here’s how. I am not going to waste much time explaining how to fix the quiet glitch. The part you need to remove is easy to see. Simply select the empty part of the recording and delete the blank space between the beginning and the end of the word. Easy.
The details of the tinny robotic glitches are difficult to spot at first. The best way for me to describe what to look for is to explain my drawing skills in first grade. I could only do two things with my Husky pencil. The first thing was to press so hard as I scribbled that I would make a little square so black that it was shiny. Image the jagged edges of my first-grade work. A voice leaves a waveform with edges that are jagged like my scribble.
By the end of first grade I could draw a human eye better than any of my friends. I still drew other animals and Godzilla with almost circular eyes, but for humans I drew their eyes almond-shaped. So, imagine the edges of my eyes in my first-grade self-portrait. The edges are smooth. Okay, when VoIP adds that tinny noise to the recorded voice the edges of the glitch are smooth. Further, the shape of the tinny glitch will generally be shaped like half of an almond, going from thicker to more narrow. This smooth-edged half almond shape is easy to identify now that you know exactly what to look for. Simply select the smooth part and delete.
If you remove just the glitch, what remains will sound like natural speech and be perfect for your show. However, it may take a few tries to make it perfect. It is tedious work – that’s why not everyone does it. With practice, you can do it easily, or you can easily pay an editor and they will take care of all your tedious work. Regardless, remove those glitches and give your listener a better listening experience.
Comments:
How did Skype become so popular a tool in what is essentially an audio medium? Is it because inexperienced interviewers need the visual to hold a natural-sounding conversation? I find that metallic, gargling, low-bit-rate sound way more distracting than ordinary landline phone audio. Consider using a VoIP landline phone instead. A phone call on Ooma or Comcast or a Cisco phone can sound pretty good, and glitches are rare because transmission of sound is the priority, not an afterthought to go with video.