The Bumpers Editor đ±
This is our editor. It was built to enable you to produce high quality, professional sounding podcasts, right from your phone. You can use it to cut out portions of your audio, add music segues and background music, compose together multiple drafts, inject audio clips to fix mistakes, and much more.
Letâs get started.
Table of Contents
Playing back audio
The first and most basic thing youâll probably want to do after recording something, is listen to it. To do that, tap the triangle in the middle of the screen (pictured below).
Now notice a couple of things. The red waves below are graphical representations of the audio you recorded before being dropped into the editor. Louder parts make the wave go up, quieter parts make the waves trend down. Also note that the waves are horizontally scrollable. These waves represent your audio timeline. The little white âcarrotâ (or triangle) in the middle of the waves tracks the current play position. Scroll around back and forth to seek to different parts of your audio track, then press play, to resume playback.
While weâre here, also notice the bar along the top of the player (pictured below). This is your âmini-mapâ. The pin represents where you are in the timeline. As you play back your audio (or horizontally scroll your timeline) the pin will move to reflect your location. You can also drag that pin directly to quickly navigate your audio recordings.
Cutting out audio
The Bumpers editor was designed to over record, and under publish. What that means is we encourage you to record yourself (and friends) talking at length, then edit that longer audio track down to just the good parts.
Because of this, cutting out audio in Bumpers couldnât be easier. We use machine learning to automatically detect natural pauses and phrases in your audio recordings, then use this phrasing to break up your audio wave into chunks. We represent these chunks in the editor by alternating light and dark sections of waves (pictured below).
These wave chunks are all tappable. Tapping a wave chunk toggles that portion of the audio on and off. When an audio chunk is off, the chunk becomes much darker, the audio indicator in the bottom right changes, and the mini-map along the top is updated to show the missing audio (pictured below). When an audio chunk is off, playback will skip over this audio, and wonât be present in your published product. Try it out in your own editor!
Adding Segues
Music segues are a fun way to quickly add personality and rhythm to your podcast. Use a boo or laugh track to help underscore a point in your recording, or add a musical interlude or intro to give your recording a certain feel and perspective.
To do this, start by scrolling the indicator to position you want to insert a segue (note: music can only be inserted between phrases). Once you are happy with the position, tap the segues button from the toolbar (shown below).
Once you tap the segue button, you will be presented with our comprehensive segue library. Our segue library features original, professionally produced music clips that you can add directly to your recording, for free. To preview a music segue, press the red play indicator next to the track name. Once you find a segue that you are happy with, tap the âADDâ text on the right hand side (pictured below).
Once youâve selected a music segue, the drawer will collapse back down to the main toolbox and an icon will have been added to both your timeline (between your waves) as well as to the mini-map. The context title will also have changed to display what music segue youâve selected and the segue button will be highlighted a light blue (this is all shown in the graphic below).
Whenever a toolbox item like segue, or loops, or label, is highlighted blue, that means that it is in an editable state. Edit states are active whenever the cursor (white carrot below) is pointing directly at a specific symbol or icon in the timeline â for example a music segue. Edit states allow you to either change the music track, or delete them all together. To delete a segue, just tap the blue segues button, then select the trashcan in the top right corner of the segues drawer (pictured below).
Adding Background Music
Bumpers also provides a few dozen free, professionally produced audio loops, which can be used as background music. From jazz to hiphop, adding background music to your audio content is super easy. First start by tapping the âloopsâ button (pictured below).
Next the toolbox will prompt you to highlight which audio chunks (or waves) you want to add background music to. Simply scroll your timeline and tap the wave chunks which youâd like to apply the backing track to. (note: to speed up this process, you can just select the first and last wave, all middle chunks will automatically be highlighted).
After highlighting the chunks you want to add background music to (and tapping the next button), a track selection library (shown below) will come up. Use the red play buttons to preview your audio (with the backing music tracks). Once you find a loop that you like, tap âaddâ to commit it to your timeline.
Adding Labels
Labels offer a unique ability for users to tag audio sections in their content. These tags are then surfaced to listeners as a way to easily navigate around your published audio. You can think of it a bit like a table of contents (shown below).
To add labels, simply tap the labels button in your toolbox.
Tapping the label button will bring up a new drawer which prompts you to name your section. Give it a small, relevant title (maybe one to two words), then tap âaddâ.
After tapping add, the drawer will transition out, and you should notice that a new label was inserted into your timeline. The mini-map colors will be updated to reflect your newly labeled section, as well as the timeline itself. Notice also that the context has changed from âunlabeled sectionâ to your section name (in this case âtwist my fingazâ, a yg song).
Import Audio
This is the last major feature to understand in the bumpers editor, importing audio. The import function allows users to import audio from their drafts folder or to record new audio and inject it inline into their current working timeline (imagine adding together several interviews and providing commentary over the duration of a project or injecting quick content directly inline, to clarify a point or re-record a section). Note: we donât allow you to import audio from outside of the bumpers ecosystem â this means no recording on your computer, then uploading into bumpers.
To get started, tap the import button (shown below).
The import drawer allows you to select previously saved drafts or record entirely new content. To record new content simply tap, the ârecord newâ button (shown below). To import previous drafts, tap the draft name. And to preview drafts, tap the little red preview play icon next to the draft name. Note: There isnât currently a way to remove a draft once you import it (other then muting all the content inside it â so be deliberate with this feature đŹ)
Once imported, you will see white hash marks on your mini-map delineating where the audio was imported. You will also see little white squigglies at the start and end of your imported audio in the wave timeline. And lastly you see the name of your imported audio in the context title area of the screen.
Wrap up
Hope that helps clear some things up! If you need any additional help, donât hesitate to reach out to us on twitter @bumpersfm or shoot us an email over at support@bumpers.fm.
