Edit Eddy

As I continue helping to produce podcasts for We Own This Town, I've found that the biggest blocker for releasing shows is the actual editing of the podcast. This isn't exactly a surprising revelation but it turns out that cleaning up an audio file is a considerable amount of work.

I currently use Audition to perform this task but lately I've been really fascinated with a new type of tool that allows you to simply edit a transcript of your show while simultaneously editing the audio itself.

I started with Descript, a desktop app that allows you to edit both audio and video via transcript and even overlay your own additional audio if you want (i.e. music queues). It's quite nice and works relatively well without too many abrupt edits but does have a pricing plan. You get 3 hours of transcripts free but after that, you'll need to pay $12 per month. Not a bad deal by any means and my experience with the app has been pleasant. They've even got an experimental feature that lets you insert new audio with voice cloning!

More recently, I've been playing around with Edit Eddy, a web based version of the same thing developed by Headliner. The app is currently in beta, so it's entirely free to use. I doubt that will last forever but I'll take what I can get right now! It's certainly a bit less feature rich than Descript (for now) but the basics are all there and seem to be more intuitively executed in terms of UI/UX.

Both seem to be very solid options if you're looking to try your hand at editing some audio with a rather clever new technique; deleting text.