How to cut the ad breaks out of a recorded radio interview
Send Vizard Agent the recording of the interview you appeared on and ask for the ad breaks to be removed. It reads the transcript around each break to find the host's hand-off and the moment the programme returns, cuts on real pauses so no sentence is clipped, and gives you the interview at its true length.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Say that the commercials go and the interview stays whole. Mention a target length only if you need one, because a slot that was half an hour on air is shorter once the ads are out, and the honest version of the full interview is the shorter one.
This is a recording of my radio interview. Make a three-minute highlight and a full version of the whole interview, with the ad breaks removed.
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
It treats the break as a block with two edges to find, not a stretch of audio to guess at. The edges are in the words: the host announcing the break, and the host welcoming listeners back. Those sentences tell you more than the music does. In the session behind this article it:
- Spotted the ad block on the first recording and asked whether the full version should keep it, with both lengths.
- Printed the word-by-word transcript around each suspected break to find the hand-off and the return.
- Cut the ads out and joined the seams with fades of about a hundredth of a second, so there is no click.
- Moved two cuts to real pauses after its review found sentence endings had been clipped.
- Stopped one recording after the host's complete goodbye, because the station's closing statement had been cut off mid-sentence, and closed on a full written notice instead.
- Delivered the full version at 25 minutes from a 29-minute recording, rather than padding it back to half an hour.
When does this not work well?
When the host reads the advert as part of the conversation. A sponsored mention in the host's own voice has no hand-off to find, so tell Vizard Agent which ones go. It also struggles when the recording starts or ends inside a break, because one edge of the block is missing and the cut has to rely on a single sentence.
Common questions
Will the cuts be audible? Not usually. Vizard Agent cuts on pauses and fades each seam.
Why is my full version shorter than the slot? The ads are out. Vizard Agent does not pad it back.
Can it keep a station disclaimer? Yes, if it is complete. Otherwise Vizard Agent ends on a written one.