The most common folder I get from a Riverside show, right, has one file called something like "recording final", which turns out to be the merged view with every person squeezed into a grid, a second file that is the host's camera, and then three audio files with names that are just strings of numbers, and the guest's separate video is nowhere to be found because nobody downloaded it, and so the first hour of that edit is not editing at all, it is detective work.
I am not complaining about the people who send those folders, because Riverside gives you a lot of options and nobody explains which ones your editor actually needs, and the honest truth is that a Riverside recording is one of the best starting points you can hand an editor, as long as the right files make it into the shared folder, so this post is basically the checklist I wish every host had before their first upload.
What should you download from Riverside for your editor?
Download every participant's separate video track and separate audio track at the highest quality available, rather than the merged recording, because the separate tracks are what make a proper edit possible.
Riverside records each person locally on their own device and then uploads those files, which means that for every person on the call there is a clean video file and a clean audio file that never went through the internet connection in the middle of the conversation. That is the whole advantage of the platform, right, and the merged recording throws most of it away, because it is a single picture with everyone already arranged and a single mixed audio track with everyone already blended. So for each person, host and guests, grab the video track and the audio track, and for audio pick the highest quality option it gives you, which is usually an uncompressed WAV. If there was a screen share, download that too. If you want, also send the merged version as a reference, it does no harm, but it should never be the only thing in the folder.
Why do separate tracks for each person matter so much?
Because separate tracks let the editor treat each voice and each camera on its own, so a noisy guest, a quiet host or someone talking over someone else can be fixed without damaging the rest of the conversation.
Think about what happens on a mixed track when the guest's dog barks while the host is talking, right, the bark and the host's sentence are baked together, and any attempt to remove the bark also bites into the host. On separate tracks the bark lives only on the guest's audio, so we remove it there and the host is untouched. The same goes for levels, because one person always sits closer to the microphone, and for crosstalk, because when two people talk at once we can choose which voice leads instead of living with a muddle. On the video side, separate camera tracks are what let us cut to whoever is speaking, hold on a reaction, or put two people side by side only when it helps, which is the difference between a conversation and a video call recording. If you want the broader picture of why this matters, I compared the two most common setups in Riverside vs Zoom for podcasts.
Does an editor still need to sync Riverside files?
Yes, a little, because the tracks come from different devices, so we always check sync across the full episode and correct small offsets, which takes minutes when the files are complete and much longer when one is missing.
In most Riverside sessions the tracks line up very well, right, and that is genuinely one of the nice things about it, because on a lot of other setups sync is where the first hour of the edit disappears. The catch here is the edge cases, a guest whose upload did not fully finish before they closed the browser, a laptop that struggled and dropped frames, a track that starts a few seconds later because someone rejoined, and those show up as a mouth moving slightly out of step with the words halfway through the episode. We use tools for sync, that is exactly what tools are good at, and then a person checks it by watching, because the eye catches drift that a waveform match can miss. If you have ever seen drift in your own exports, what to do when your podcast audio drifts out of sync explains the causes. And one practical tip, ask every guest to keep the tab open until the recording page shows their upload is complete, because a half uploaded local track is the single most common Riverside problem I see.
Riverside does the hardest part of remote recording for you, so the only way to waste it is to send your editor the wrong files.
What does a human editor do that Riverside's built-in tools do not?
The built-in tools are good at quick, automatic jobs like trimming, captions and pulling short clips, while a human editor makes the judgment calls, what to cut, when to switch cameras, how to pace a conversation and which moments actually matter.
To be very honest, I think Riverside's own editing tools are useful, and for some shows they are enough, which I will come back to. But automatic tools work from patterns in the audio and the transcript, so they tend to cut on silence and pick clips from the loudest or most keyword-heavy moments, and that is how you end up with an episode that feels choppy and clips that start mid-thought. With us a person sits through the episode from the first word to the last before cutting anything, and that is what lets us make the calls a tool has no way of judging. That is one, pacing, deciding which tangent is charming and which one loses people. Secondly, the cut itself, switching to the person reacting rather than the person talking when the reaction is the story. And on top of that the finishing work, colour so the host and the guest look like they are in the same show even though they recorded on different cameras in different rooms, lower thirds and graphics in your style, sponsor reads placed properly, music and a mixed audio master. Remote guests also have a specific look problem, they glance at their own screen instead of the lens, and I wrote about how we handle that in remote guests and the eye contact problem.
Name your files like someone else has to find them
Riverside's default names make sense inside Riverside, but once the files land in a shared folder alongside last week's episode and next week's, they become very hard to tell apart, and every minute an editor spends working out which file is which is a minute not spent editing.
A simple pattern fixes it, right, and the one I like is episode number, date, person and track, joined with underscores, so something like EP042_20261014_Host_video and EP042_20261014_Guest1_audio. Put each episode in its own folder named the same way, keep the person names consistent from week to week so "Host" is always "Host", and if you have a guest with a long or tricky name, add the correct spelling in your note so the lower third is right first time. It sounds fussy, I know, but it is basically the cheapest speed upgrade you can give your edit, and on a weekly show it adds up very quickly.
How fast can a Riverside episode come back?
Once every participant's tracks are in the folder, the first cut is with you inside 48 hours, and after your single round of notes the fixes land one working day later, the exception being a very long session, an episode heavy on graphics or a four-person call with four cameras, which can add a day, and you hear that from me when you book it.
Nothing about a Riverside show needs the editor in your city, right, the recording already happened in three different rooms, so we work from Dubai and the shared folder is the entire handoff, and that folder has no size cap, which matters because three people's separate 4K tracks plus uncompressed audio get heavy very quickly. And since Dubai sits ahead of every US time zone, the session you finish after dinner in New York or Los Angeles is already in our folder by the time the Dubai working day begins, and remote podcast editing covers how that plays out zone by zone.
What does a Riverside podcast editing service cost?
Because every Riverside guest brings their own camera, most of these shows land on the Pixel Samy Podcast Studio plan, where an episode running sixty minutes or less with two to four angles costs 299 dollars, synced, cut and delivered in 4K, and anything longer I quote on the call.
A host and two guests is already three angles, right, and that plan exists for exactly this situation, cutting between the people and balancing the colour so three laptops in three rooms with three different lamps end up looking like one show. If you would rather we only ever use the host's camera, the single camera plan costs less, and every length, pack and extra is laid out in the pricing section, with nothing to sign beyond the episode you are sending. The thing I would add, from the edit side, is that the plan matters less than the folder, because a Studio episode with one guest's video missing is really a single camera edit with a gap in it, and no plan fixes a track that never got downloaded.
When the built-in tools are enough, and when they are not
I want to be fair here, right, because not every show needs us. If you publish a short weekly audio show, you have a decent microphone, and you are happy with a quick trim and auto captions, Riverside's own tools and an hour of your time are probably the better value, and I would tell you that on the call. A solo freelancer is also a good choice for a small show if you find one who knows remote multi-track work, the only structural trade-off is that one person's schedule becomes your schedule.
Where a human team earns its price is the show that is trying to grow on YouTube, the one with two or three people on camera, a consistent look, sponsors and clips, where pacing and camera choices decide whether people keep watching. If you are weighing recorders as well, I compared Riverside vs SquadCast and Zencastr vs Riverside from the editor's side. Does that match where your show is right now? If you are not sure, a 15 minute call where I open one of your recent episodes is enough for me to tell you which plan fits and what it would cost, or send a note to samy@pixelsamy.com. But at the end of the day, the most useful thing you can do for your edit, before you talk to me or to anyone else, is simply open Riverside after your next session and download the right files.
So yeah. That's my way of saying it.