In this video, we’ll look at how you can start your very own podcast using Podcastle, an all-in-one podcasting platform. We’ll start by recording your podcast, whether it’s just you by yourself with another person or even with several remote participants. Then we’ll look at how to edit your podcast. We’ll also explore how to enhance your podcast with some amazing AI capabilities, like automatically improving the sound quality, so it sounds like it was recorded in a studio, even if it was just recorded on your phone. Then at the end, we’ll publish the podcast and distribute to services like Spotify or even YouTube. If you follow along, by the end, you’ll be able to launch your very own podcast. Let’s dive in. First off, head to the Podcastle website. You can click on the card right up above and I’ve also included a link down in the description. I partnered with Podcastle to show you how you can start your very own podcast entirely for free. With a free plan, you get all of the audio recording, hosting, and distribution capabilities. With a premium plan, you get additional functionality like AI audio editing, voice cloning, royalty-free music, and much more. As we walk through this video, we’ll look at what some of that functionality is to see if it’s worthwhile for you. Again, you can use Podcastle entirely for free. On this page, let’s click on sign up. Choose a paid plan or you could skip for now if you want to start with free. Once you have an account, you’ll need some type of idea or topic for your podcast. In this video, I’ll be pulling together a podcast for my favorite company, the Kevin Cookie Company called The Cookie Chronicles. I have a feeling it’ll do really well. Once you have a topic, it’s time to bring that idea to life. I’m now in the main Podcastle interface and I’d like to start by recording my very first podcast episode, and to do that, I’m going to use something called the Recording Studio. You’ll see an icon right here in the top left-hand corner. Let’s click into that. On this next screen, I can type in a title for my podcast. Here, I’ll type in The Sweet Origins: How the Kevin Cookie Company Came to Be. I like that title. And down below, we can also choose the recording type. Do you want to record audio only or would you also like to record the video? Now for this, I’ll stick with audio only. However, although I’ve chosen audio only, I can still use video to see the other participants who are going to be part of the podcast. It just won’t record them. Down below, let’s click on next. On this next screen, we can now configure the camera and the microphone. Let’s start by configuring the microphone. Right up here, I can see my levels, so it looks like it’s capturing sound through my microphone, but let’s make sure that it’s the right microphone. Right over here, I can mute or unmute. And with this dropdown, I now see all the different microphones connected to my computer. Now you may have just one or you may have many different microphones. And ideally, you’ll want to select the best microphone connected to your computer. Now for me, I’ll use my headset as the microphone. I’ll select this one. Now, if you scroll down just a little bit, you can also select your speakers. If you’re just recording a podcast all by yourself, the speakers won’t matter as much. But if you’re planning on having some remote participants, you can choose where you want to hear all the other participants. Here, I’ll also select my headphones. Over here, you can turn your video on or off. I’ll click on this and look at that. You can now see me. To the right of that, if you click on this dropdown, just like we saw with the microphones, you can select the webcam that you would like to use. Now you may have one or you may have many in this list. So now I have my microphone, I have my speakers, and also my camera configured. Down below, I can type in my display name. I’ll set it to Kevin Stratvert. And then next, you can also choose whether you’re using headphones or not using headphones. Now, I highly recommend using headphones, especially if you’re going to be recording with other participants. If you don’t use headphones, their sound will be picked up by your microphone, and you can imagine that won’t give you the best audio quality. So again, I recommend using headphones, but if not, PodCastle will help you eliminate some of that feedback from your speaker into your mic. I’ll select I’m using headphones. Now down at the bottom, you also have the option to copy the studio link if you’re planning on inviting others to this session. You could email people the link, you could also message it to them, and then they’ll join this session. I’ll click on this. I’m planning on having another person join. Once you’re all set with your microphone and also your camera, let’s click on join studio. This now drops us into the recording studio, and here we have everything that we need to be able to record a podcast. Over on the right-hand sides, right over here, again, you can copy a link if you’d like to invite others to participate in this podcast. You can invite up to 10 other participants, and that’s far more than I will ever need for this podcast. Down at the very bottom, you could also continue to adjust the various settings. So, let’s say you want to change the microphone or you want to adjust the speaker. You could also select your camera. For this podcast, I want to make sure that I nail my intro, and PodCastle has something really neat that’ll help with that. In the bottom right-hand corner, I have this button. And when I click on this, this opens up a teleprompter. So over here, I can click on that and that turns the teleprompter on. Here I could adjust the speed, the text size, and also the opacity. Let me type in my intro. So, there we see it. And now I could play it and you’ll see how the teleprompter works. That way I will get this intro down perfectly. I’ll close out of this. And now let me get the other participants into the session. Hey, thanks for hopping on, Elizabeth. Hey, Kevin, how’s it going? Oh, fantastic. Are you ready to talk cookies? Kevin, I’m always ready to talk about cookies. Awesome. Okay. So, I’m going to click the record button down at the bottom and you’ll see a countdown timer for five seconds, and then we’ll launch into the podcast. And keep in mind, if you make mistakes, if you don’t know what to say, it’s okay, we can always go in, we can edit all the talk track and we’ll get it to sound perfect. Okay. I’m a little nervous, so that’s good to hear. All right, here we go. I’ll click on record and here’s that countdown timer. And Elizabeth, do you think it would help if maybe I pull up an outline of what we want to talk about just so we stay on point? Yeah, that’d be great. Perfect. So down on the bottom, I could click on this button that says share screen, and here I could share a tab in my browser, I could share a window or the entire screen. I’ll click on the window and here’s the script that I pulled together. Down below, I’ll click on share. And can you now see the script? Yeah, this is awesome. Awesome. Okay, so I’ll kick it off. Okay. All right, here we go. Welcome to the very first episode of Cookie Confidential with Kevin Stratvert. I’m your host, Kevin, and today we’re diving into the sweet story of how the Kevin Cookie Company came to be. Oh, sorry. That’s right. I’m Elizabeth. And we’re excited to take you behind the scenes. All right, that sounds great, Elizabeth. I think we did a really nice job running through that, and I’ll go in and make some edits to it. Down at the bottom, let’s stop the recording. Here, I’ll click on confirm. And so now the recording is all done. Now, one of the neat things that’s going to happen, if you look in the top right-hand corner, you’ll see that it’s uploading all of the audio. And if you’re recording video, it would also upload that. It’ll upload a local copy from your computer, so that way we get the best possible sound quality. All right. Perfect. Well, now that we’re all done in the top right-hand corner, you could either leave the studio, which will send you back to the main podcast interface, or we can click on edit. I’d like to get this up as soon as possible, so I’m going to click on edit. This now drops us into the Podcastle editor, and we can now use this to edit our podcast. You’ll notice that each speaker from the recording studio has their own track. Here’s Elizabeth, and then I can see her audio waves. It’s the volume of her speech over time. Underneath that, I can see my audio track and here I can see all of my speech. And underneath that, you’ll notice that there’s another track with Kevin Stratvert. This was when I shared my screen. It also captured any of the audio from my computer. I wasn’t playing any audio on my computer, so you don’t see any sound waves here. I don’t need this third track. So over here, I’ll click on the three dots and then let’s go down to delete to remove that track. One of the nice things about having separate audio tracks for each individual speaker is you can make adjustments to each individual audio track. Here, for example, I have my audio track for Kevin Stratvert or me. I can click on this edit icon and this opens up a pane over on the right-hand side, and I could adjust things like the volume just for my audio track and amplifier. I could also pan the audio. And here, if I click on add effect, I can add a compressor or an equalizer just for my audio track. Maybe you have someone join your podcast and maybe their volume is a little low. You can adjust just theirs without affecting everyone else. It’s a nice feature. I just realized that I forgot to record the outro for the podcast. How silly of me, but I’ve already left the recording studio. Luckily, I can continue to add additional audio directly within the editor. To record additional audio, here, I’ll select my track. That way, the audio will be recorded to this track. Right up here, we have something called the play head and I want to record this additional audio at the end. So here I’ll take the play head and move it all the way to the end. Let’s place it right there. Up on top, I have this button that says record. When I hover over, you’ll also notice that there’s a shortcut key shift together with R. So, I can also press that. Let me press on that. Over here, I can choose which microphone I would like to use. I’ll use the same mic as what I used in the recording studio. Now here’s a little trick. If you want to record multiple microphones, maybe you have two people who you’d like to record, you can click on input configuration. Here, you could select two different microphones. Here, if I click on this list, I could select a different one, but I just need to record one person, so let me toggle that off, and down below, I can now click on start recording. Stay tuned for the full story, the recipe and a taste of what’s coming in future episodes. Thanks for joining us for this special debut. Once I’m all done, I’ll click on stop up above. Let me now move this back so I could see all the audio. In the bottom right hand corner, I could click on this icon and I can zoom out a little bit, and that way I could see the entire podcast all in one view. Come to think of it, I also wanted Elizabeth to record one more outro line after mine, but unfortunately she’s not here to record within the editor. Luckily, I can also import audio in. She recorded separately on her computer and then sent me the audio output. Up on the top bar, there’s the option to insert. I’ll click on this and here you can import audio or video, any type of audio you have on your computer. So over here, I’ll take an MP3 file that Elizabeth sent me and here I’ll insert it. Now it placed it right here at the beginning, but let me actually move this up to Elizabeth’s track and I’ll place it right here at the top and let’s listen to how that turned out. Down below, I’ll click on the play icon. You can also press space bar. That’s the shortcut key. We’ll see you soon. In the meantime, enjoy a cookie. That sounds perfect. I want to start making some edits to the beginning now. So, in the bottom right hand corner, I’ll zoom in a little bit and right here in the beginning, we actually don’t start talking until about 20 or 25 seconds in. Let me jump here and I’ll hit play and can you now see the script? Yeah, this is awesome. Awesome. Okay, so I’ll kick it off. Okay. All right, here we go. Welcome to the very, we don’t start right until about this point. So, I want to remove everything to the left of the play head. So how do we do that? Well, let’s start by trimming a clip. When I hover over Elizabeth’s clip, over on the left-hand side, you see this bar. I can press and hold on this and I can now trim when the audio starts. So let me pull this all the way over to the play head. I’ll position it right there. That’s almost at 25 seconds in and now it’s removed all of Elizabeth’s audio to the left of that point. And I want to do the same for me. So, I could do the same exact thing. I could click on my audio track and then here I could trim it, but let’s look at another technique. My play head is right here. I could also right click on my track and there’s the option to split the clip. When I press on that, it changes my cursor to scissors and then I could cut the clip precisely at this point. Here, I’ll right click again and that removes the scissors. Now as an alternative, I can also go up to the top bar and here it’s currently set to the select tool. I can click on this and the second option in the menu is to split. So, I could press on that and that again changes my cursor to the scissors. And if I right click, that removes it. But when I click on this dropdown, you’ll notice that I could also use shortcut keys. I could press the two key on my keyboard or I could hold S. S as in split and that’ll also open up the split tool. So, let’s try that. I’ll press S on my keyboard and there I have the scissors and now I could press right there and that splits the clip. Now I have two separate clips. I’ll select this one and then I could press delete on my keyboard and there it’s now removed the beginning portion of both of these audio tracks and now the audio starts right when the podcast kicks off. Let’s have a quick listen. Welcome to the very first episode of Cookie Confidential. That sounds great. You’ll notice now that there’s all this empty space over to the left of both of these tracks. Here, using the selection tool, I could press on this and pull it all the way over to the left and I’ll do the same with my audio track. I’d like to preview what this podcast sounds like so far. To move the play head, I could press on it and I can move it to a new position. Alternatively on this timeline, I could click in any position and that’ll also move the play head. Alternatively, down at the bottom next to the play icon, I could also click on the seek icon so I could seek to the left and that’ll jump over by five seconds or here I could seek to the right. Now, what’s even easier, you could also use the arrow keys on your keyboard. So, if you press the left arrow key, that’ll also seek five seconds to the left or here the right arrow key and that’ll seek five seconds to the right. Here I’ll move all the way back over to the left-hand side, so here I’m at the very beginning. Let’s now play it by pressing space bar. Welcome to the very first episode of Cookie Confidential with Kevin Stratvert. I’m your host Kevin and today we’re diving into the sweet story of how the Kevin Cookie Company came to be. I really like that intro but rather than starting with me talking, I think it would work a lot better if maybe we had some intro music. Luckily, Podcastle comes with a big collection of royalty-free music that you can use as part of your podcast. Over on the left-hand side, let’s click on music. This opens up music. Up on top, I can search for music. I can also click into categories to find the music that I like and down below I can see all sorts of different sample tracks. Let’s have a quick listen to Dip Yo Hip. Oh, I think that could work really well. Now with this track, over on the right-hand side, I can add this to the audio editor but I really only want the intro of this. One of the neat things, I can click on this drop down and you can pull in different components of this song. So here you can pull in the instrumental of just the primary or the chorus, the verse and here there’s the option for the intro and it’s just seven seconds long. That’s exactly what I want. Now I want to insert this but I don’t want to insert it on top of either of these talk tracks so I need to add another track. Right down here, I have the option to add a new track. I could also use a shortcut key shift together with T. Let’s press on this and this has now added another track. I want to place all of my music on this track and right over here it’s currently called track seven but let me click on this and give it a more descriptive name. I’ll call this music. That way, whoever comes in to edit this knows that this is the music track. I’ll place the play head all the way at the beginning and then over here, let’s click on add to track and this will place the music right at the beginning. Let’s have a quick listen. You’ll notice that the speaking now overlaps with the music and I don’t quite like that so we need to adjust it so the speaking starts later. Now with the selection tool selected, right up here, I could confirm that it’s on the selection tool. You could also press one on your keyboard. Here, I’ll select these two tracks and I can move both of those tracks at the same time. So let me move them right to after the intro, maybe right there. Now I want the music to fade out as I start speaking. When I hover over the music track, you’ll notice these handles at the top. I can pull that and that’ll apply a fade to the end of that track. Let’s hear how that turned out. Welcome to the very first episode of Cookie. That sounds pretty good but I’d like the fade to go a little bit longer. So here, let’s adjust this and then I could also pull in the talk tracks and let’s listen one more time. Welcome to the very first episode of Cookie Confidential with I think that turned out really nicely. Let’s now continue listening to see what other changes we need to make. With Kevin Stratvert. I’m your host, Kevin, and today we’re diving into the sweet story of how the Kevin Cookie Company came to be. One thing to call out is when I stop speaking, there’s a little bit of a delay or some silence between the end of my speech and the beginning of Elizabeth’s speech. So ideally, we’ll have to remove that. Oh, sorry. Also right here, Elizabeth starts out by saying, Oh, sorry. So, she wasn’t quite ready to start speaking. Now that’s no problem. We could remove that. We could use the techniques we’ve learned so far. Over here, I could split the clip. I could also split again and we can remove the, Oh, sorry, as well as the silence, but there’s an even easier way than splitting and then trying to move clips around. I’ll select Elizabeth’s talk track and let’s right click, and there’s the option to transcribe. Let’s click on that. This now opens up a transcript and Podcastle uses AI to convert all of the speech into text. And this is such a nice way to edit a podcast. You basically edit your podcast, just like you would a Microsoft Word document. So right here, we see that the current word highlighted is, Oh, sorry. Down below, I could click on play. Oh, sorry. That’s right. I’m Elizabeth. As it plays, it highlights the active word. Now I can make edits directly to this. Now right at the beginning, she says, Oh, sorry. And I don’t want to include that. I want to remove it, so I’ll click on, Oh, sorry. Let me highlight those two words. We could play it back. Oh, sorry. That’s right. I’m Elizabeth. And I want to remove, Oh, sorry. So here I’ll highlight those two words and then click on the remove icon and that removes it too. Now if I play it, that’s right. I’m Elizabeth there. It’s now removed it. That makes it so easy. Now to make it even quicker up above, you can identify specific words. So over here, I could search for a word to find it in the script. So, let’s say I want to look for magic. I could type that in and it highlights magic, or maybe I want to find all of the filler words. When I click on filler here, it looks like Elizabeth said, um, ideally, I’d like to remove that. So over here, I’ll click on remove and that removes that filler word. And over here, I can click on silences and this shows me all the silences throughout her talk track. So, let’s listen to what that sounds like in this sentence, whether you’re a cookie lover or just curious about the baking bit. So right there, she paused a little bit and I think it’s probably longer than it needs to be. So, I also like this silence and we could remove that. Now let’s have a listen again. Whether you’re a cookie lover or just curious about the. I think that sounds a lot better. So over here, I can use the transcript to make all of my edits to the talk track. Now, for now, I think this sounds good. If I want to toggle back to the audio editor, up on top, I can see that I’m currently in the text view, but over here I could jump back to the audio view. And as I hover over, there again, you see the shortcut keys shift arrow key. And here I could jump back and forth between the two views. Now I’m back in the audio view. Back within the audio view, one of the really nice things is you see that it automatically makes all of those edits for me. So here it split the clip, remove those words, here it split it again at that pause. And here let’s listen to it. That’s right. I’m Elizabeth and we’re excited to take you behind the scenes, whether you’re a cookie lover or just curious about the baking bit. That is so good. Listening to Elizabeth’s mic audio quality, it doesn’t sound like she recorded in a studio, and I think we can improve that. Down in the bottom right-hand corner, let’s click on this icon, and this opens up the AI assistant. I have all these different AI tools that I can use to perfect my audio quality. Up at the very top, there’s something called the magic dust AI, and when I hover over it says I can remove noises and optimize dynamic range for studio quality audio. That’s exactly what I want, so let’s click on that. It looks like it’s now improved it. Let’s go back to listen to how much better it sounds. And we’re excited to take you behind the scenes, whether you’re a cookie lover. I think that sounds a lot better. In the intro, I refer to the podcast as Cookie Confidential instead of The Cookie Chronicles. Let’s have a quick listen of Cookie Confidential. Ooh, we changed the name to the cookie chronicles. I could re-record or alternatively, I could try using my voice clone to correct this. Over on the left-hand side, let’s click into voices. And here I can generate speech using any one of these stock voices, but up on top, I can also use my own voice. I’ll click on this and down below, I’ll click on create digital voice. Now this could be used for voiceovers or you could use it to correct any speaking errors in your own audio. Let’s click on this. To create your own AI voice, you’ll have to go through a few different prompts. You’ll record yourself reading 70 different sentences, and then it takes about 24 hours to generate your AI voice. Click on continue. You could select your microphone, continue again. You have a few different tips. And then you’ll have to go through a legal disclaimer and record yourself reading all of these different sentences. Once you’re all done, you’ll see your digital voice. To get back into your project, in the top left-hand corner, let’s click on Podcastle. This brings us back to the main interface, and here’s that project I’ve been working on. I’ll click on edit project. Back in the project, over on the left-hand side, let’s click into voices. And here we see all the stock voices, but I want to use my own voice. So over here, I’ll click on my voices and down below I see my voice. Now simply go down to your voice, hover over and then click on add. And on this next screen, I can type in the text that I want myself to narrate. So, I’ll type in The Cookie Chronicles and then click on generate. It’s now generated my AI voiceover. And if I just want to listen to the voiceover, over here, I can isolate the track, so I only hear this. Let’s click on that and that’ll mute all of the other tracks, and then let’s press the space bar to play. The Cookie Chronicle. I think that sounds really good. Over here, let me turn off isolate track, and that way I’ll be able to hear all the tracks. Now let me find the exact point where I want to insert it. Welcome to the very first episode of Cookie Confidential first episode. Okay, so right at this point is when I want to use this new audio. So over here, I’ll pull this over and align it with the play head. And right here, let’s select this track, then let’s go to select and I’m going to select the split tool. So, I’m going to split right up here, and this is when I finished saying the previous name, I’ll split there. And here, I’ll click out using my right mouse button, and let’s delete that, and this will now leave a gap. Now let’s hear how this turned out. Welcome to the very first episode of The Cookie Chronicle with Kevin Stratvert. Okay, I think that sounds a lot better. Now with this one, I may need to adjust the volume a little bit. It sounds a little low. Let’s adjust it up and listen one more time. Very first episode of The Cookie Chronicle with Kevin Stratvert. Oh, not bad. So far, I’ve been making all the edits on my own, but I think I would probably work faster if I could collaborate with some teammates. In the top right-hand corner, I can click on this icon, and then I can invite others to work on this project with me. I’ll have to move it from a personal workspace into a teamwork space. I could define whether they can view this file or if they can also come in and make edits to the file. Now this is a fairly short podcast, so I probably don’t need to use this. However, it’s good to know that it’s available. Up here, I’ll click on X, and I’ll make all the rest of the changes on my own. I’m now all done making edits, and the last change I want to make before I finalize this project is to normalize the audio levels or basically balance all the audio levels between Elizabeth and myself. I’ll click on the AI icon in the bottom right-hand corner, and right here there’s the option for auto leveling. I’ll click on this, and it’ll now go through and adjust all of the levels in the project. I’m now all done working on this podcast episode, and I’d like to publish it. In the top right-hand corner, let’s click on export. And here I have a few different options. Here I can export the project, and here I can choose the format, the quality level, if I’d like to include the transcript, and then I could export the file. I can also share it with others, so they can go to this address and then they can listen to the podcast directly via Podcastle. Or the third option is I can also publish it out to services like Spotify or Apple Music. And this is the option that I’d like to go with. So right here, I need to first create a show. Let’s click on this. I see a few instructions. They look good. So down below, let’s click on get started. First, I need to give my show a name. So right up on top, I’ll type in the name, The Cookie Chronicles with Kevin Stratvert. Next, I’ll type in the author and the language is English. Then let’s click on next. On the next screen, you can choose a category for your podcast. Now, one thing to note, you can select two different categories. However, Apple podcasts will only use the first category. For this, I’ll select food. It’s all about cookies and the content is clean. Then let’s click on next. On this next screen, I can now add cover art for the show. Now I have a cover art that I’ve designed called The Cookie Chronicles. I think that looks great. As a note, I used AI to make this, but I think it looks good. Bottom right-hand corner, let’s now click on finish. Now that you’ve created your show, you can now start adding episodes. So right here, let’s click on create an episode. I can now start filling out the episode details. Up above, I’ll enter in the name. And down below, I’ll type in the description and let’s click on next. And here too, I could also add cover art for this episode. So over here, I’ll upload an image and let’s click on next. And lastly, up at the top, we have a few steps left. We could type in tags. You could also type in a season number, season number one and your episode number. And then you could add some information about this episode. Is it a full episode, a trailer or a bonus? Now this is more of a trailer, so I’ll select this, the contents clean. And down below, you can also decide whether you want to schedule the publishing to go live at a certain date. I want it to go live immediately, so I’ll toggle that off and then let’s click on finish. And congratulations, we have now published the podcast, but we still have a little bit of work to do. You’ll see down below that we have something called an RSS link. Let’s click on copy link. This is a feed that we’re going to provide to different services like Apple Podcasts and Spotify that will notify them every time a new episode lands. To demonstrate how this works, let’s connect to Spotify. This now brings me over to Spotify, and if you don’t yet have a Spotify account, you’ll first need to set one up. Within Spotify, in the top right-hand corner, click on your profile image. And right here, there’s the option to add a new podcast. Click on that. Next, it’ll ask you whether you’re starting a new podcast or if you already have a podcast. Well, we already created our podcast in Podcastle, so we already have one. Let’s click on this button right here. And over here, we can enter in some details, but at the very top, we can paste in the RSS feed link. This will now connect Spotify to Podcastle. Over on the right-hand side, you can already see all the details related to the show. And here I can scroll down. Now this all looks good. We’ll click on next. We have to verify that we own this podcast, and here I’ll send the code and go through the verification process. Once you enter in your code, click on next, and then you’ll have to fill out some details related to your podcast. However, Spotify will now look at Podcastle, so every time you publish a new episode, that episode will flow through to Spotify and other services behave the same way. You simply provide the RSS feed and then they’ll be notified anytime you create and land a new episode. There you go. You now know everything you need to start your own professional quality podcast with minimal effort. If you found this video helpful, please give this video a like, please consider subscribing, and I’ll see you in the next video.