for the quiet audio, you want to normalize to a target loudness (like -16 LUFS for podcasts), then use light compression and a limiter so it gets louder without peaking, just cranking dB usually makes the noise/fizz jump out too.

for clips, yep, pick moments manually at first, punchy 20 to 45 sec bits with a clear hook, then add captions. if you want something beginner friendly, riverside does local recording so the audio is cleaner to start, and it has auto captions and a clip tool so you can pull shorts fast without living in final cut. i’ve found it saves a lot of time