Ardour is great for editing podcast/radio features!

This image shows my current editing process for a podcast in Ardour (will link the final piece in “Made with Ardour” once it’s done). I quite like this workflow, so I thought I might share it with anybody else here, interested in “sound montage”/narrative podcasting.

I’ve been asking for help to get this workflow going in this forum, and the kind help of many here has been great.

I now import my tape (usually circa 2 hrs a piece) directly to sources-list rename them, drop them in as new tracks, use range-mode to find the gems (marker a little ahead and a little after, to predict any later needs when editing) and then I select “bounce to source list with out processing”. I then name the tracks and sort my sources list by naming/renaming the various bounced regions and clicking “name” in the top bar of the list-viewer. This way clips like “interview_1 topic_1” will be near “interview_1_topic_1a” to later drop back in the tracks.

Did I mention how much I just keep loving this DAW more and more??

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This is absolutely true :sunglasses: I have been using Ardour for professional radio work since Version 4 came out.

For those who would like to explore Ardour’s opportunities: Here is one of my radio projects, two versions of a report from 2018 about the project of French railways SNCF “À vous de jouer”: about pianos on railway stations where everyone can feel free to play. I have used mixing, automation, parametric EQs, pan etc. etc.
Please feel free to download the project folder, open one of the projects and explore all the things that can be done using Ardour :muscle:. Pity for my colleagues who don’t know and spend too much money for their Mac software.

For German users: I once have tried to sum up a procedure to use Ardour for radio and podcast work in German language.

Michael

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Very cool!
Thanks for sharing :slight_smile:
Good to know there are more of us out there !

This is really cool! I’m ashamed to admit how bad my German is (after all, we DO study it in school for 3 years here in Denmark) - but this looks really good. And your project sounds amazing.
Any chance that you could do a translated version in English? - Might be something for the people at Transom to publish. To help spread the word.

I am very glad to have found someone who uses Ardour for journalistic editing. I work for a European public radio station and have long been looking for open source software that would allow me to complete complex audio editing projects. The most important thing for me is to be able to work on very long interviews. I usually proceed like this: I listen to them and break them down into smaller parts that I then use later for editing. So for me it is very important that the editing program allows me to extract clips from the main audio file and allows me to organize them outside the audio tracks. As I understand it, this is possible in Ardour by selecting portions of audio from the main track and creating stand-alone clips that then end up in the sources window. Is this the case? Can you explain your workflow in more detail?
Thank you very much

nasosecco

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NB - this reply is copypasta from another place where a similar question was asked, jut puttingit here so anyone interested will have an easier time finding it.

My workflow:
I usually import my tape into Ardour directly into the timeline.
In “View” I choose “Editor List” (Ctrl + L)

Then I start listening to my tapes and with range-mode active, I select clips that i proceed to bounce to sources-list (select region - right-click - choose “Bounce - NB: without processing” and name the region).

I then use alphabetical and numerical naming to organize my sources-list - so I get clips about one main topic named like “A - topic 1.1” “A - topic 1.2” - then “B - topic 1.1” etc.
So I can navigate a large amount of tape.

In the image I shared here, I can see I have named the clips after the person I interviewed - So “Biologist - WhatTheTapeIsAbout - MoreSpecificalWhatItsAbout” and “Hunter - WhatTheTapeIsAbout - MoreSpecificalWhatItsAbout” - but since then, I have begun using the other procedure.

To rename a clip, I just double click the current name in the Sources-list and write a new name.

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