Audition is an incredibly powerful DAW, it has features unique to Adobe that are extremely useful. However, if you don’t have a good workflow it can be cumbersome, or confusing to get the most out of it. Today, I’m going to break down my professional podcast editing workflow that I use for almost every single podcast that I edit.
Keyboard Shortcuts
In my opinion, the shortcuts that Audition starts you off with are not very conducive to ergonomic editing sessions. My shortcuts take advantage of keeping your pinky on the CTRL (CMD), Shift, and Alt (Option) keys, so you have the whole bottom left side of the keyboard easily reachable on your left hand, with all the flexibility of holding the CTRL, or Shift key along with those letter keys.
I’ll give you a list of all my shortcuts and what they are called in Audition here, as well as show you a picture of how I rest my hand.
Z - Ripple Delete
X - Select Clips to End of Session
A - Shuttle Right
S - Scroll to Playhead
D - Move Tool
V - Time Selection Tool
C - Split
F - Enable Clip Keyframe Editing
CTRL + Z - Undo
CTRL + X - Delete
CTRL + S - Save
CTRL + C - Copy
CTRL + V - Paste
Shift + X - Zoom to Preset 1
Shift + C - Zoom to Preset 2
Shift + A - Zoom Out Full (All Tracks)
Shift + S - Zoom In Full (Selected Track)
Some of them that don’t make immediate sense:
Ripple Delete and Select Clips to End of Session are positioned right next to each other because every time you ripple delete in a multitrack sequence, you’re probably going to want to drag the rest of the tracks back to create a crossfade with what you just deleted.
I use the Split shortcut instead of using the razor tool, if you’re coming from Premiere, you might be used to using the razor tool, but splitting does the exact same thing with fewer clicks!
Enable Clip Keyframe Editing of course, allows me to fade volume in very specific ways, but the reason I have it as a shortcut is because when grabbing the clip your Move Tool will change to the Keyframe Editing Tool if you’re hovering over the yellow volume line, which stops you from being able to drag the clip. So, it’s easier to just disable this when doing the bulk of editing.
Zoom to Preset 1 & 2: You can save a certain distance that you’ve zoomed into the timeline and when you use the shortcut it will automatically zoom to that distance. This is incredibly helpful for when you’re doing very tight edits when you need to zoom in a ton, and then you can hit play and zoom all the way back out to your comfortable viewing distance.
Zoom In & Out Full: This is different from zoom presets in that it will zoom vertically in or out of tracks you have in your multitrack session. This is really helpful if you need to see the details of a waveform so the waves are taller, you can quickly zoom into one selected track, make your edit, and zoom out to see all the tracks again!
Basic Workflow
Here is the basic workflow that I use for nearly every podcast that I edit. This won’t go into too much detail, if you’re interested in any of these topics check out the rest of my blog posts, or go to my YouTube channel where I go into much more detail about all of these steps!
Basic Restoration - This is making sure the individual clips don’t have too much reverb, background noise, mic plosives, mouth clicking, or things that won’t necessarily get focused on in the final mix.
Strip Silencing - After restoration, I start a multitrack session, bring the clips in and remove all of the parts where the person isn’t speaking. This helps focus the listener on what the person speaking is saying, instead of having random noises, or unnecessary vocal responses from the other person.
Main Editing - This is where you go through the whole episode and cut out any crutch words, make sure each clip is faded in and out, and anything else that the episode may need inserted or taken out. This is all done in the multitrack session.
Assembly - If you need to move things around to create a cohesive episode, this is the stage for that. If it was recorded in two parts, or if you moved things around while editing, this is where everything gets put back together to make a listenable episode.
Mixing/Mastering - Exactly what is states. I actively listen, while EQing, Compressing, De-essing, etc. to make a final product that is at -16 LUFS loudness (I always mix in stereo)
That’s the basic workflow, like I said if you want to dive deeper into each topic, I have a ton of resources on my website, and my YouTube channel!
Tips and Tricks
Here are some random things that I have found useful and time-saving in my time using Adobe Audition.
Hold Alt when fading clips with the fade envelope (in multitrack) - If you’re holding Alt it will fade both the beginning and the end of the clip, saving you time!
Hold Alt when bringing clips into the multitrack session - If you have multiple clips selected and drag them into a multitrack session it will place them one after the other in the timeline. However, if you’re holding Alt it will place them on different tracks!
Disable auto-scroll - In your preferences, you can uncheck the box saying “Enable auto-scroll for playback”. Make sure that is unchecked! When you’re editing stuff and zoomed in really far, you want to be able to continue looking at that part even when playing it back!
Make sure you’re taking advantage of your RAM - Also in your preferences, you can allocate a certain amount of your memory for Audition! Take advantage of this as it will help speed things up when you’re trying to do multiple things!
I hope these techniques have saved you some time and improved your podcast edits! I will be adding to this post as I think of more tips and tricks to share, but I wanted to get this posted to hopefully help you out with your editing journey!
If you made it this far, consider reaching out to me at matt@ieditpodcasts.com to chat about great and creative ways to improve your podcast, or if you would like some help with your entire podcasting process, including launching your show, consultations, editing, or just a more personal conversation!
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