Video Podcast Editing for tech talk; welcome to the world of DevOps
Check out DevOps Decrypted here, or on your favourite podcast platform:
DevOps Decrypted is a multi-platform podcast, hosted by the wonderful people (and self-proclaimed nerds) at Adaptavist.
Dirty Beast Studio delivers audio and video editing, processing, and marketing material for this deep-diving tech talk show – overcoming the challenges of working with international teams on different audio hardware.
Adaptavist is a fast-moving tech company that transforms organisations through technology. With 22,000+ customers (including more than half of the Fortune 500), The Adaptavist Group as a whole has a big audience – and telling their story is a big part of keeping their people engaged, and growing their customer base.
To platform their brilliant staff and grow their audience, the company began experimenting with podcasting – and needed to both streamline and elevate their process.
By recording their monthly Zoom chats, the Adaptavist team had found a quick and easy way to produce their content - but with so many different sources (webcams, Bluetooth headsets, wired earphone mics, laptop mics…) and choppy internet connections – keeping the show coherent and smooth can be challenging. And with all sources bounced down into one AV, stream, clean edits and levelling are challenging, too!
In this video example, we’ve got a range of speakers using different hardware in a range of spaces – controlling each element was key.
Overcoming the challenges
Each episode gets a custom audio chain, depending on the audio source. Where possible, speakers get split up into their own audio channel for processing, too.
Edits remove anything the audience isn’t supposed to hear – team prep and washup, rehearsing intros, errors, coughs – and soemtimes, things need to be rearranged chronologically – or further videos (and audio) need to be spliced in.
Volumes are matched, and noise is reduced as far as possible, with additional cleanup from gates, EQ, and de-reverb tools if there are audibly distracting room reflections. Sidechain compression is applied to the theme music to duck it down when speakers are talking, and the whole episode is mastered to match industry levels.
Titles are generated using branded assets, and each show is delivered in the client’s preferred format (MP3 files for audio, and YouTube-ready MP4 videos).