Podcasts can be some of the most time-consuming videos to edit — they’re often longer than 1 hour in duration, and involve hundreds of cuts between camera angles in order to follow the current speaker and to keep the viewer engaged.

Here’s the secret to how pros do it: They use FireCut to do it for them!

While you can try setting up a multicam sequence and playing back your video in 2-4x speed to add camera switches yourself, this is still a manual process and can take a lot of time to get right. FireCut is the only reliable way to get your podcast edited in less time than the duration of the podcast (e.g. editing a 1 hour podcast in less than 1 hour) while still keeping it interesting, natural and engaging.

To edit a podcast automatically with FireCut, go to “Multi-track”, tag your video and audio tracks to the correct speakers, and click “Analyze”.

Analyzing your video only takes a few seconds. FireCut then suggests what cuts to make — i.e. which video track / camera to show at which time.

To get maximum control, you can also play with some settings:

• Speaker switching frequency — how often to switch

• Preference for wide shots — how often to use wide shots (when multiple people are speaking)

• Cutaways — add breaks in very long shots by showing a secondary camera, in order to keep the viewer engaged

• Boost speakers — improve the prominence of a speaker in the final edit by artificially giving them a boost

Be sure to scroll down and preview the cuts to make sure you are happy with them, then click “Go!”

FireCut then automatically adds the right cuts and camera switches in your sequence. Go grab a coffee while your work is done for you! Because the editing is done in your sequence, you can still edit the cuts that are made.

Previously you would have to hire a dedicated video editor to watch hours and hours of footage for you, but FireCut’s multi-track feature can do it for you.