Descript

Vorteile

Descript takes all the filler sounds out of your recording - um, uh, etc. You can shorten long pauses - dead air. I love editing from the transcript. I have a mild tremor so fiddling with the usual sound editing software is difficult. It takes forever to get it at just the right spot. With Descript, I make the change in the transcript and Descript makes the change in the audio. I can delete words or whole sentences. I can even move things around. I believe you can train it to your voice so you can add words to the transcript and the audio file will sound like it was there from the start. It's magical!

Nachteile

If I want to use the transcription for other purposes, like a blog, it requires a lot of editing. Sometimes sentences aren't structured right and sometimes words are wrong. It's not all that time consuming, just annoying.

Vorteile

It's very easy to use as a novice. There are lots of functionality buried within that I know I'm not utilizing, but I don't need it to get my job done. I love the ability to edit the audio by editing text and adding music onto my podcast voice files is straightforward. This is by far the easiest editing tool I've tried.

Nachteile

There are lots of features that I know exist but that I don't see or that I don't know how or when I should use them. This is on me to learn, but I do wish tools would provide access to mini-tutorials from within the main workspace so that when you are working you could better identify whether that functionality you've never used might help to solve your problem.

Vorteile

I did like that everything worked as intended. It is very straightforward and appealing to those that do not like to get overwhelmed by complicated programs with bells and whistles everywhere.

Nachteile

Given the simplicity, Descript leaves a lot to be desired for those who are looking for a more advanced editing tool. Again, the paywall could be the reason, but why would I buy this if I can’t try the best features?

Vorteile

Being able to edit text and have that automatically edit the audio is an amazing time saver. I was skeptical of the quality of edits this would provide, but 95% of the time the cross fades etc. it adds are spot on. For that 5% of the time where it's not quite right, you can easily adjust things using the waveform editor.

Nachteile

The transcription service seems to have been primarily trained on white/European-descent speakers. I've edited several episodes with African guests and the transcription is awful. You can still use it to edit the audio OK, with some laughs at the mistakes it made. But, if you want to publish a transcript then you're basically rewriting the whole thing.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Pro Tools und REAPER

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Descript

The ability to edit a transcript (with fallback to waveform editing) is a complete game changer. I can focus on the content and just drop out to audio editing when I need to. I still use other DAWs later in the process, but Descript makes that big edit of 90+min of raw audio for each episode so much more manageable.

Vorteile

Descript is a strong collection of audio tools that just weren't available when I started making podcasts. The ability to organise, collaborate and publish an audio project in the cloud with a friendly interface is great and used to be a huge pain to figure out. Editing audio with the transcript and the waveform at the same time allows you to skip a bunch of technicalities and focus on your creativity. Video capabilities expand the possibilities, and the overall suite of tools make me rethink entirely what podcast editing can or should be in a good way.

Nachteile

Stability is the biggest problem I have with this. After working on about a lot of different projects with different collaborators, I'm still coming up against things that make it freeze, make it crash, or break a project (usually salvageable at least), and end up needing to work around issues to keep things rolling.

Also, while Descript has a lot of features, in comparison to any long-standing audio software it leaves so much to be desired. There are many missing tools that would add a lot of room for creativity and technical cleanup. Things like audio meters, noise gate, spectrum analysis, filters to automate creatively, ducking, but also the more unexpected effects like reverb, stereo delay, pitch shifting, layered FX, these are all things podcasters of any kind might want to use for effect at some point and many folks I know can't, or don't want to tell their stories without them.

This is especially true for video which misses on some basic transformations like rotation for text and images.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Soundtrap

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Descript

Soundtrap as an editing-with-transcript tool was way too limited when I looked into it. Although it would fill a lot of gaps missing among the Descript audio tools, it wasn't anywhere close to a worthy comparison.

Vorteile

This is a whole new way to edit audio and video content. I love the fact that there are frequent updates and new features. Simply amazing to edit content.

Nachteile

Not much in terms of audio processing. No noise reduction, etc.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Adobe Audition

Warum Descript gewählt wurde

Audition was getting to be too expensive as part of the CC Suite.

Zuvor genutzte Software

Adobe Audition

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Descript

At the time I chose it because of price. But when I used the free version I was hooked and signed up for a paid version.

Vorteile

My favorite aspect of this software is the ability to delete filler words, shorten pauses between phrases and make my guests sound so much better than they do in the rough interview track. I love being able to edit the audio file by deleting things from the transcribed text and being able to go back and forth between editing in the text and editing in the audio file. The last episode I edited on descript cut 20 minutes off the interview. Then I bring that edited track into garage band to add intro/outro music, etc. ( i know I’m supposed to be able to do all this inside descript but I haven’t taken the time to learn how to do that.

Nachteile

Poor transcription of non native speakers. Not knowing how to add in existing transcript and match it with the raw interview track before editing.

Vorteile

I like that I can edit a video based on the visual transcription, The AI and that while I'm recording I get a transcription simultaneously.

The features I desire most are a dark mode feature, a chroma key feature so I can add light overlay and animation. I would also like a pause feature added to screen recording and voice recording because I use this to help me think in between recording without stopping the session. And please fix bugs such a lagging.

And the integrations I would recommend are Audacity, Davinci Resolve, and Anchor FM because that is what I use.

Nachteile

Sometimes there are glitches if I am working in multiple windows and Ill get error codes. Sometimes it's hard to place tracks on the timeline, You click where you want it to go and it goes somewhere else in the project. I want some filler words to stay included and it's hard for me to figure out how to keep them. When I record audio and mess up, the overdub function doesn't pop up when I right-click. I wish the zoom and pan were smoother looking.

Vorteile

It is user friendly and doesn't require much experience in video and audio editing. Filler words and word gap detection and removal are great features. The export and publish features allow for sharing and publishing the content to other applications. It transcribes very fast and it's great in identifying and assigning speakers. It is easy to cut and paste words while moving the audio waveforms. It also does a great job of matching separate audio files.

Nachteile

Stability of the software is a great concern. Sometimes it just freezes and you can't access the project you are working on. There is also more that can be done on the sound effects.

Vorteile

What I love the most is that when you delete audio from the timeline, it never actually disappears. You can easily go back in and re-add something you took out earlier. It doesn't rely on undo only, if you took out a sentence early on and decided after half an hour of editing you want that sentence back in, its right there. Incredible.

Nachteile

I don't like the organization on the home page, I don't quite understand the folders. I like organization and not being able to archive my finished edits versus the edits I still need to do is a bit frustrating but easy to overlook!

Vorteile

I love that to edit the audio or video, you just make the edits in the transcription instead of trying to find the exact place in the audio file. Makes it so much easier! My favorite is that it can take out all the "filler words" like "um" in about 2 clicks and make the audio sound great! So much faster than how I was doing it before with having to listen and take them out one at a time.

Nachteile

There are constant updates to the software, about 1 a week. This can be annoying since there is always a pop-up that says you need to update and restart almost everytime I open the app. Also, if you have multiple accounts (I have multiple clients I work with), it is hard to sign out of one account and then sign into another. Not sure why this isn't straightforward, but often when I sign out of one account and then try to sign into another, it just puts me back into the same account.

Vorteile

I love that I'm able to collaborate with my editing team so that we can implement quick changes from clients no matter who is available. It was super easy to bring in new team members and train them on the workflow as well. I also love how the transcripts make it so much faster than other apps to edit - the combo of seeing words + waveforms (and the search/delete option) cut editing time in half.

Nachteile

Clicking and dragging still needs some work, not sure yet about the new toolbar. I also really would like to be able to use VSTs to denoise easier, right now the workflow starts in Audition or Pro Tools for any processing (our clients honestly don't understand that they need to record in quiet spaces) and then we bring it into Descript to do the edit.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Adobe Audition

Warum Descript gewählt wurde

Easier to edit with the transcript

Zuvor genutzte Software

Adobe Audition

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Descript

Just ease of editing & ease of collaboration. Adobe is a significantly higher cost to collab with, and definitely doesn't have the same level of collaboration capability.

Vorteile

The ability to record and transcribe how-to videos in real time with ease

Nachteile

Nothing so far. Just started using it recently but it's been a really great tool that's been added for us across the company

Vorteile

I love the studio sound feature that can turn my echo filled and mediocre audio into amazing audio. It also puts silence between the words spoken which makes it easier to cut and edit audio.

Nachteile

I've had a few issues with the studio sound process slowing down significantly the more I use it in a single setting.

Vorteile

Transcription, and ability to make short video clip edits really easily

Nachteile

App is sometimes laggy and slow when uploading larger files

Vorteile

The product is pretty easy to use straight off the bat but its when you get the transcripts back that things really get interesting. The way the text and audio/video files are linked is totally special. You can change one and the other follows. You can copy and paste text and the media comes along too. Once you've compiled your rough you can export

Nachteile

Software feels a bit slower and bloated now due to the addition of the editing features - and a bit more sensitive to handle. I have to be more accurate when I click!

Vorteile

Transcription, text search, the ability to use the software effortlessly means this is a crucial piece of software to me both personally and professionally. I love the feature of after transcription, clicking on a word and playing the video from there, such a simple feature but I am sure was very hard to implement from a programming perspective.

Nachteile

I think it would be great to see a thumbnail overview of projects currently being worked on, having that option as well as list view would be very helpful to me. Sometimes the software can be buggy in terms of asking something to be transcribed and it says this cannot be completed at this time. The other thing I like least is after you've imported multiple files and transcribed them, the software can re-order them, then the videos and transcription are out of sequence, there is no easy way to re-order them and get them to where you want them to be.

Vorteile

Many startups with new products use the terms disruptive, game changer, etc. But, in the end few actually are. Based on my experience, Descript is one of those products that really is a game changer. They've taken a fundamentally different approach to video and audio editing by applying a universally familiar document editing UX to video and audio editing. This removes much of the complexity of traditional editing software and puts it into a format that's accessible by virtually anyone. The integrated transcription function is really useful and the Overdub feature is very cool for being able to make edits without re-recording and splicing in audio. And the way it's all integrated with the cloud with one click publishing makes the usability very smooth and frictionless.

Nachteile

As with any type of new software and when there's a new UX concept, there is a learning curve and things don't always work the way you would expect. Some people experienced with traditional editing software may find the UX a little limiting, but I don't think that's the type of user Descript is targeting with this solution. I've found the learning curve to be very fast at the beginning , so you can be up and running with it and creating content quickly. Once you need to access more advanced features it takes a little bit of time to figure out where the feature is and how to use it, but nothing out of the ordinary. I think it's just that the initial experience of being able to edit video/audio in a word processor is so good that you are then surprised when some of the more advanced features are not quite as intuitive.

Vorteile

I'm not a video editor by any means. In fact, I've been using all sorts of different software over the past few years and I just didn't find anything that was really easy to use -- until Descript.

As somebody who is a heavy content creator, I needed to start creating video content and it was really hard because I had to rely on others to edit the videos for me. Now with Descript I can do it myself which is super powerful and saves a lot of time. My favorite features are "shorten word gaps" and "remove filler words". Everybody thinks I'm a magician when I show the my videos post-production.

Descript has changed the entire scope of my work and how I do my job. It's much easier than any other software tool that I've used. I love how easy it is to use, the interface is very intuitive, it's very quick and simple. My friends and teams love Descript too.

Don't be scared! All you need to do is upload your original video or record a video directly in the software and then edit it out later or add text or change the voice if you want. It's really great.

I also love the collaboration aspect of Descript.

Nachteile

It takes a LONG time to download high-quality videos.

Vorteile

Descript is so easy to use. It's cut down the editing time for our podcast interviews and the overall show while increasing our quality. With the ongoing new features too, like Overdub and the ability to generate Audiograms, the service continues to get better. The transcripts have also allowed us to increase the accessibility for our podcast and the generated videos while helping to keep costs down (and as the AI continues to improve, our time to correct transcripts as also gone down)

Nachteile

The feature that needs attention is how the software deals with silence. Long silences are treated as "speakers" with the AI is deciding who it detects speaking. That causes issues with transcript correction. In addition, things that are actual silence can be removed, such as laughter or crosstalking or words the AI might not know. That adds extra editing time so those things are part of the final product. I'm hoping this aspect gets updated soon.

Vorteile

What I love most about Descript is that it makes the process of creating audio and video clips (as well as editing for podcast episodes) super simple. I also love how often the team updates the software and releases new features. I feel like my trust in Descript is well-placed.

Nachteile

I wish there was more flexibility in the export options. For example, we can do 90% of our audiogram/videogram workflow in Descript, but we still have to move into something like Adobe Premiere for that last 10%. If there were just a few more customization options, we could do 100% in Descript. That said, many of the features I love didn't exist in the beginning, so I'm confident it will eventually get there, and am not worried in the slightest about building our processes and systems around Descript.

Vorteile

I love how it makes editing podcasts easy with my clients and collaborators. Editing the text to edit the sound is a really handy feature. Filler word removal has been great

Its great for recording scripted ads too as I can quickly punch in/out to get the right cadence and ultimately the best take

Nachteile

There are some glitches when it comes to collaboration i.e. not being able to make comments (and notifying your collaborator) until the audio is transcribed, which as a collaborator on someone else's drive I cannot do

Room tone generation seems to be selected as default

When using filler word removal, the cuts can sound quite harsh and require spaces before and after to sound natural

Vorteile

I am so glad that I found this tool. It has made my life so much easier, it combines the best of video editing and screen-recording. I can create professional videos that look great, and I can record meetings, transcribe them, and then edit them into a podcast. I really enjoy editing my videos using this app because it is intuitive and easy to use.

Nachteile

There are numerous video tutorials to watch and learn from. However, having time to watch them is the only downside.

Vorteile

I was skeptical that editing audio in this way would result in a good-sounding podcast, but it has made the editing process so much clearer. Lots of great little features enable me to make content that I can push to socials as well!

Nachteile

The software frequently updates with significant changes to where things are placed and stored and no explanation of these changes. The auto-transcription is riddled with errors that it’s a little tedious to correct. Too many features are behind a SECOND tier paywall. Some of these things I get (the high-tech voice generation feature seems with extra money) but it seems odd that as a paying subscriber I can’t, say, replace the Descript logo in my audiograms.

Vorteile

The price of Descript makes it an easy choice for me as a single person doing audio/video edits and transcription for workshops, support calls, course videos, podcasts, and more. It's an essential piece of my workflow and being able to do video/audio edits as easily as deleting a sentence on the screen is phenomenal.

Nachteile

The export process for the Creator edition is lacking: I don't need or want the Descript default publishing system of published/hosted pages and transcripts or audiograms. If they had a bulk export option: video, transcript, and subtitles files, I would love it even more. If they had a direct upload to Vimeo I would be over the moon!

Vorteile

I use Descript for screen recording software demos. The speech-to-text transcript functionality is excellent. The video can be edited side-by-side with the transcript editor. If you remove or correct parts of the text, the video is synced. Auto-cleanup of vocal disfluencies or hesitations ensures a clean and professional-sounding end result. Finally, I use the transcribed talk track for auto-generating subtitles, and I share it with co-workers as input for written content.

Nachteile

Processing of a video takes a long time. It requires a lot of computational resources and somewhat undoes the time savings of recording. The U.I. takes some time to figure out when you are new to Descript.

Vorteile

I like the text based editing feature. The AI tools are good as well.

Nachteile

The pricing is a little high. I have to spend too much time cleaning up the transcript between transcript errors and Speaker labels, If those worked well, I could greatly reduce the time it takes me to get a podcast ready to publish.

Vorteile

Extremely user friendly. I was able to get started editing audio files immediately. This software is so easy to use and really speeds up the editing process.

Nachteile

It's cloud based, so you can't use it without internet access. While it's very easy to use, it lacks some of the features that come with more complex systems (i.e. complex audio processing options, like equalizers and advanced effects)

Vorteile

Descript makes it easy to communicate with our production team for edits, pulling of soundbites, etc. It's also nice that it is its own app with storage due to the size of most files.

Nachteile

Combining multiple files from one podcast for editing is a little strenuous.

Vorteile

I was able to get a transcript of my audio recordings in just a few

Nachteile

I found it difficult to cut, paste, and adjust the volume of my audio files.

Vorteile

Really love how easy it is to edit audio and video with text. Searching for specific phrases or moments via text instead of scrolling and trying to find it saves so much time!

Nachteile

The audio mixing features are still a bit lacking in my mind, especially if you get into a more complicated composition. But I work around by mixing and exporting audio in Pro Tools and dragging it in for the edit and music!

Vorteile

Because it's text based, Descript makes editing video and audio easy, especially when working with complex or long files.

Nachteile

Because it's text based, muting background noise or other minor things that would be easy in a different editor are difficult.

Vorteile

The main reason we use Descript is to transcribe meetings. It takes just a few minutes to transcribe an hour long meeting, and it saves us the time of doing it ourselves with a human. We can then easily reference the meeting later when we need to create content based on what was said in the meeting.

Nachteile

Nothing so far. I haven't used all the features, and although it's primarily used for podcasts and videos, we haven't yet used all of these features at our company. For transcribing meetings though, it's been a life saver.

Vorteile

What's not to like about this software. It's incredibly powerful, but also intuitive and easy to use. There are plenty of training resources and even for a novice it's not out of the question to hit the ground running on day one!

Nachteile

Not much to dislike. This software is amazing. On a couple rare occasions I had issues with my video and audio being out of sync, but that was easy to correct.

Vorteile

We use descript for two things: audio transcription (sometimes many hours a month) and for text based video and audio editing for staff who are less tech savvy. It works beautifully for both things.

Nachteile

I get so frustrated with the CONSTANT moving around of features and the sunsetting of classic might even make us switch projects. The editing aspect especially, we use it because it makes sense for folks who are more word (rather than visually) focused and for less tech savvy employees who just need to take out a word here or there or trim a video. The constant messing around with the environment confuses folks!

Vorteile

Ease of use, edit video like a text document, AI features

Nachteile

The initial learning curve. It's such a powerful platform that it will always take a little getting used to. The How To content is awesome and really helpful

Vorteile

The things that I liked the most about Descript is the transcription tool, because you can edit it easily and to various languages. I also liked the video editing tool, because it has many options for you to edit and decor your video with different and original graphics (it has fun gifs, images, videos, and you can even upload your own multimedia material). Finally, I can say that Descript is very complete and has efficient tools that are really easy to use.

Nachteile

There’s nothing I would complain about on the features, tools or functionality of Descript.

Vorteile

- Very easy to transcribe audio and manipulate any transcription error- Great collaboration tool with clients and team review, without sending the project file back and forth- Great tool for finding and downloading broll for video- Very easy to add captions to video

Nachteile

- Several bugs throughout (the issues changes throughout each update)- No offline mode solution (You have to upload media files to the cloud every time, large files can a long time- A bit of a learning curve for video editing features

Vorteile

Editing and text to speech, the voice are realistic enough to be used with sounding robotic

Nachteile

Nothing, I like everything about it plus it is regularly updated

Vorteile

This siftware can be a game changer, its very quick and precise to transcribe and the approach to edit the videos is quite interesting. Automaticaly removes filler words and silences and you can easily edit the videos and audios just by editing the text!

Nachteile

The video editor should be improved. Not being able to zoom out of the canvas makes editing the videos very hard, since the boundaries are out of the work area.

Vorteile

A Google Docs-like editor for modifying video literally feels like living in the future. I am not a professional video editor, and so I find it incredibly useful to be able to my own quick edits and rough cuts - especially for video content for social.

Nachteile

I occasionally find that it is hard to get it to do exactly what I'm trying to do - which is the downside of such a powerful intuitive interface - if you don't want to do the obvious thing, it can be challenging to figure out how to work around (e.g. splitting audio and video tracks etc). But these are minor niggles.

Vorteile

I can make professional sounding and looking video ON MY OWN. IT's not quite the same as hiring a videographer, but for $30 a month, it's pretty amazing!

Nachteile

I feel like the learning curve is slightly higher than Descript leads on for it to be. But that said, the free workshops they offer and their interactive tutorials were a huge help.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Loom

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Descript

I liked how they talked about it.

Vorteile

I appreciate that it is a software-based service that I can have on my laptop and work on whenever I feel the urge to do so. When attempting to detect speakers, its auto transcript performs quite quickly and accurately.

Nachteile

Unfortunately, the transcript isn't flawless. In order to get an exact translation, human editing is necessary. It's also inferior to programs like Audacity and Adobe Audition for fine-tuning audio.

Vorteile

I love ALL the great features! When they work! Please don't depend on them though!

Nachteile

Worthless boilerplate support answers for PAID users. No REAL help for problems.

Vorteile

Il prodotto è facile da usare e le trascrizioni sono veramente fatte bene

Nachteile

Non è piaciuto il fatto che siano poche ore gratuite

Vorteile

Text-to-speech feature. The feature could learn my voice and turn it into an AI voice. Now, I don't have to record my own voice for the audio of my next video project

Nachteile

In the span that I have been using the software, there has been major updates and changes made. More and more features have been added like the video editing for example, and some changes to the UI. I am mainly using it for audio purposes only, so the new features are not relevant to me. But I still have to be updated with the UI changes as it affects my work flow. I am still in the learning curve to master the software

Vorteile

The features i liked about Descript are,
-it has a automatic speech to text.
-you can also change settings to suit what's best for the user
- it's friendly user
- one can edit videos as well
- it has different variety options in one software which makes it accessible
- fike documents are kept safe and its a trustworthy software which i would recommend to a beginner who doesn't know and wants to learn how to transcribe
- and also there are mini courses so one can understand the software better for which ii think it's a great feature to have.

Nachteile

It tends to mulfunction which makes it difficult to use
Tye software can sometimes crash due to having more users on the software which i believe it has to be taken into consideration, considering that its a used software all around

Vorteile

Editing text instead of audio has revolutionized my company's workflow. We make podcasts and it has saved us tons of time to use Descript for highly produced shows. It doesn't really help with weekly shows that require minimal editing and fast turnarounds. But for months-long narrative projects, it is so incredibly easy to edit text linked to audio and then script around that. We then export to Audition or Protools to mix and score. But having this step along the way saves many hours of time and improved collaboration with internal and external people.

Nachteile

It's really buggy! Things stop working frequently. Then Descript fixes it. Then there's another bug. I have faith that they'll get to a point where I'm not running into bugs every week or every few days, but it is frustrating for now.

Vorteile

Descript has many amazing features - even ones that I would have never thought of to wish for. Here are some of the features that most impressed me.

I love being able to edit video or audio recordings simply by editing the transcript. You can edit within the same file, or you can open another file in a separate window and copy/paste the sections you want from the original file - which remains intact.
Descript's filler word and "dead air" removal are pretty amazing as well.
The option to export a format that is editable in Adobe Premiere Pro comes in very handy. Currently, my workflow is to get the main video edit done in Descript, and then fine tune and add additional elements in Premiere. In fact, I had used Descript's Marker feature to indicate section headers that I was going to add in Premiere. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Descript's Markers translate directly to annotated markers in Premiere, making it really easy for me to find the spots to insert section graphics and which header cards to put where.
Descript's built-in screen recorder has been very helpful for grabbing b-roll from websites. I even used it to show the Descript team some minor challenges I was having with their app.

Nachteile

The accuracy of the automatic transcription can be a bit hit or miss. British accents are notoriously problematic. Not only does the app misinterpret words, but the rhythm of the person's speech can cause the app to put the wrong punctuations in all the wrong places.

If the transcript needs a lot of editing, I'll put the whole transcript in Edit Mode. But I often need to play back a section of audio to know how to correct it. Playback doesn't seem to work in Edit Mode, and it's very cumbersome to switch back and forth.

I often need to add captions to the exact same clip in two different formats for social media - e.g. square and vertical. Simply uploading the caption file I had exported from Descript for the first clip to the second clip didn't work as I would have expected.

The Descript developers are continually updating their app - which is both good and bad. It seems like every time you open it, some feature is new or modified when you haven't even had a chance to get comfortable with the way things were.

Vorteile

1) I like the realistic-sounding voices
2) I like the large selection of voices
3) I like the ability to change the pitch and speed of each voice
4) I like the male and female options
5) I like the fact that you can copy and paste large amounts of text at one time to edit
6)

Nachteile

1) The learning curve can be a bit much
2) Not enough tutorials that get right to the point