Checking in on Podcast Notes
Three years ago, Dan and I collaborated on a project that allowed us to dynamically create editing notes on our Macs while recording a podcast. A recent query about my process made me realize that it would probably be worth revisiting the Podcast Notes project. After all, when we were first writing about it, a single podcast session could be educational enough to make me completely revamp my approach. Now we’ve had three years of podcasts.
First, a recap: We were seeking a way to take notes during a podcast without writing time codes down manually on paper like some of our friends. The desired end result was a text file featuring time codes next to notes about what needed to happen at that particular time, whether it was removing cross-talk or a bad word, or even just noting a change in topic that merited a new chapter. The goal was something that would have minimal cognitive overhead—unlike writing a time code down on paper. We ended up with a Shortcut that did the job by looking at the creation date of the active recording file, extrapolating a time code, and appending the time code and any passed input to a text file on the Desktop.
Turns out that Dan isn’t editing as many podcasts as he used to and so he doesn’t use our Podcast Notes shortcut much at all. I don’t edit as many podcasts, either, but that’s only made Podcast Notes that much more valuable, since I want to provide notes to my editor. I think a few of our friends are also using the Shortcut now, including my Upgrade co-host Myke Hurley—and believe me, getting Myke to forsake pen and paper feels like a real win to me.
So what has changed in three years? Not a lot, but little rough edges have been smoothed out. I’ve found that I really only need three pre-wired buttons on my Stream Deck: Chapter Marker, Crosstalk, and Cut This. I have a button that lets me choose from six different preformatted events, but I almost never use it. Those three types of note cover almost every eventuality.
They’re also all I need because of the other major change in my workflow: I always keep the note file open in BBEdit. Not only does this give me security—I can see my notes going in as I press the button—but it allows me to mark up the text file with added detail. Here’s how that generally works: When an event happens, I press the button and a new time code is added to my notes file. This often happens when I’m talking, so the last thing I want to do is type one thing while I’m saying something else! That’s a recipe for bad podcasting.
But when I stop talking and my co-host or panelist takes over, I will frequently switch to BBEdit and add some notes in, such as the name of the chapter in question or more detail about the thing that needs to be cut. This approach also means I don’t really need more buttons for less common events—I can just press one of my buttons, like “Cut,” and then edit the entry to say “background noise” or “swear” instead. BBEdit is very savvy to changes to underlying files it’s editing, so the BBEdit window updates with the new entry almost immediately.
I’ve found a couple of ways to launch my shortcut in Stream Deck. The most reliable method is to use Keyboard Maestro, which offers an Execute Shortcut command that allows you to pass input along. I’ve got a Keyboard Maestro macro for each different text string that I’m passing, each bound to a different button. That said, it’s just as valid to bind the button to a shell command like shortcuts run "Podcast Note" -i "crosstalk". As a result, you can pretty much connect the shortcut to anything you can think of—Stream Deck is just the system that has clicked for me.
Because of my integration with BBEdit, my original vision of pressing buttons and not worrying about the resulting text file has sort of vanished. My notes file is pretty much always open when I’m recording a podcast, and I’ll annotate it when I get a chance. But the time codes are always accurate, because they’re recorded the moment I press the button. That’s important.
Using BBEdit led to a pretty weird issue with my workflow, though: if I edit the file in BBEdit and fail to save it afterward, the next time the shortcut runs it will overwrite the existing file, causing a conflict in BBEdit, which will force me to choose between losing my edits or losing the time code I just tried to save. As a result, I’ve added this AppleScript script to the very top of my Shortcut:
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "System Events"
if (name of processes) contains "BBEdit" then
tell application "BBEdit"
set docList to every document
repeat with doc in docList
if name of doc contains (item 1 of input) then
save doc
end if
end repeat
end tell
end if
end tell
end run
This script is pretty simple. It checks to see if BBEdit is running, and if it is, it searches for an open document that matches the filename format that Podcast Notes generates. If it finds one, it tells BBEdit to save that file, at which point the rest of the shortcut runs and appends a new entry.
While writing this article, I’ve realized that I manually open the note file every time after creating it, in order to audit it in BBEdit. As a result, I’ve just appended another AppleScript script at the very end of the Shortcut that checks if the note file is currently open in BBEdit and opens it if it isn’t! Ah, there are always more things to automate.
In any event, the Podcast Note shortcut is pretty stable, works really well, and has been a huge boost to my productivity. I pass notes to Jim Metzendorf and Chip Sudderth, who edit the audio and video versions of Upgrade, using this approach. (And Myke does likewise when he’s not on paternity leave.) I also pass these notes to Steven Schapansky, who edits The Incomparable and Downstream. And of course, even if I’m editing the podcast myself, it’s sure a big help to have a list of chapter breaks and edit points at the ready rather than having to guess where the edits might be based on memory.
Here’s a link to the current Podcast Note shortcut if you’re interested in viewing it, using it, or adapting it.
Finally, an easter egg for those who have read this far. Recently I recorded a podcast late at night, the fourth Incomparable member special in three days. I was tired, and when one of my co-hosts ripped out a swear, I didn’t bother to press a note button. I didn’t even have a notes file open! I had assumed it would all be an easy edit.
So what do you do if you don’t have a podcast note? What I did was use Whisper to transcribe the podcast into subtitle format (which includes time codes), and then searched for the swears so that I could snip them out. I even built a python script that will check a subtitle file against a dictionary of bad words and automatically output a list of time codes to be bleeped. I don’t know how often this will come up in the future, but it was a fun little project.
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