I have been using Descript for a while now, and have noticed a new series of features being added to the platform. However, even though those additions have been more than welcome, what I consider the platform's top feature is something that has been at its core for quite some time: Descript's transcription tool. In particular, I was really impressed by the accuracy of the transcription tool's AI. If I had to estimate, I would say that the accuracy of the transcriptions Descript has done for my video content has been around 90%, which is really good.

While the transcription tool has been very good and accurate, I feel that its user interface could be improved. In fact, it has happened to me a few times to accidentally delete parts of a video (since Descript can be used for video editing too), while I was trying to edit some of the captions/subtitles that were created by the tool's automated transcription feature. Luckily, I have also noticed this in time but this could have very well have led to a video having missing parts because of this "accident".

I think if you come from a video or text editing background, Descript will make perfect sense to you within seconds of watching their intro vids. I come from those backgrounds and that was my experience. Yesterday I gave a training session to a colleague who also has editing experience and he immediately took to it and mastered the basics as well, despite not having a hardcore tech background. It really does feel like magic when you start using it and completely fix a long and rambling guest answer in minutes. As I mentioned in Cons above, I've had problems with it in the past, and at the time I started testing Otter as an alternative in case I needed to switch. But I preferred Descript and I think it has better tools, and I've had no problems since then while using it several days each week for 6 months.

1. That it does such a good, incredibly fast job of transcribing and assigning speaker roles 2. That it combines separate audio tracks into a sequence so you can make edits to an entire production, but *also* gives you the ability to drill down into individual tracks for really fine-tuned edits. 3. That it combines audio editing and text editing into a single interface, so you can literally edit your audio track as if you were editing a Word or Google doc. I never imagined that this could be an interface or should be an interface, but after seeing it for the first time, the concept clicked into place for me and I immediately took to it. 4. That it auto removes filler words and phrases, BUT even more important, kind of magically smooths over (most of) the cuts so that you can't tell a cut was made. It doesn't always work perfect, but more than half the time it does, and it feels like I'm working with software from a sci-fi future. 5. I want to say I love their Overdub feature, where you can deepfake your own voice (or someone else's on your team if they give you permission, I think--there are some privacy rules in place that I haven't fully explored). It also feels like a sci-fi technology. However, in my day to day usage of this tool, I never use Overdub because I'm almost always editing other people who aren't Descript customers. I'm eager to test it one day with my own voice recordings, but for now I can't really give any feedback on its effectiveness.

1. At the end of 2020 I had some bad experiences with server-side delays and edits not being saved properly, which reminded me that some of the core functionality for this service is beyond my control because it's not happening locally. On the other hand, I haven't had any problems since (it's been about six months). 2. They update the software very frequently, and often make changes to the interface at the same time. I now just prepare myself to deal with a relocated UI element whenever there's an update, but I don't enjoy the fresh challenge each time it happens. Rapidly making incremental improvements to functionality makes sense to me, but I'm not sure it should be the approach for UI improvements since that can be so destabilizing to a user's workflow.

The concept is amazing and could save hours on a podcast edit… but, it just doesn't work correctly or as you would expect a lot of the time. Once the automated transcription improves and the workflow stabilizes, this could potentially replace the various tools I use to edit audio and video.

The ability to edit an interview or podcast just by editing the text is incredible. The workflow is fairly straight forward – import audio file, choose how to transcribe, wait…, edit the transcript & audio in various ways, export or publish as needed.

The automated transcription is good, but not great. There are always little errors that seem obvious to a human – capitalize the first letter in a sentence, don't capitalize a word in the middle of a sentence, abbreviate doctor as Dr. when a name follows, etc. – and they seem to always show up, even when they've been corrected previously, so it's unclear whether the 'machine' is actually 'learning'. The app appears to not be built as a native app for macOS which means it lacks certain core features. The most annoying to me is that the window always opens in the default size (i.e. small) and never remembers the sizing or positioning that I choose every time I open it. The developers are rapidly adding features, but almost too quickly. Once I get used to a feature or function, it doesn't take long for the menu item to be changed or moved (Share, Export, Publish all do similar–though different–things, and have each had their turn as a unique menu item or being grouped together in various ways). I got very efficient at correcting the transcription (which, unfortunately, must be done frequently) until they changed the entire process of editing the transcript.

Descript is a great software for easy audio transcription and audio editing. Being able to edit a transcription is helpful to easily find filler words and repeating words to remove from the audio.

The transcript isn’t 100% perfect. It requires a human to edit if you need a word for word transcription. Also, when needing to fine tune audio it’s not as good as using audacity or Adobe audition.

Overall, using Descript is a super positive experience. We're able to preview episode scripts with clients which makes the approval process a better experience for them. Our scriptwriters are able to work directly with the audio and transcript at the same time and when they're done, we can export the raw project for cleanup and sound design in an external DAW which is awesome forethought from Descript. With other projects, editing and sound design and exporting can be done entirely in Descript and I'm really happy with the results. Despite its limitations and bugs, I still struggle not to recommend Descript to anyone making a podcast. Whatever you're doing, there is a good chance you will find a place for it in your process, just maybe not as much or as reliably as you would like.

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.

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.

We've been able to scale from one podcast client to 20+ in less than a year, and have onboarded 2 editors. It's making it possible for my business to scale rapidly, and revenue to skyrocket!

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.

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.

I love Descript and have recommended it to several other podcast editors who now use it too. I use it for a "story edit" of each episode, taking the full audio then chopping and rearranging it, plus taking out filler words etc. You can do compression/EQ/music/bumpers/etc. in Descript but I prefer to export to a full blown DAW for that part. Descript would be great for this stuff if you are editing your own podcast and audio engineering isn't your primary focus.

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.

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.

I love editing audio and video again. I feel like I’m editing a taking Word Document. Simply amazing. Try it and you won’t go back to editing only using a waveform.

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.

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

I love how simple it is to cut down audio, take out sentences you don't want and edit out silences. I love the automatic syncing of audio files. My cohost and I are long distance and record audio on Zencaster which allows us to have separate audio files! Descript seamlessly matches them up. Descript saves me so much time while editing!

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.

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!

I love that Descript lets me edit video by editing a transcript. In the past, planning my edit - because of how my brain was working - I practically ended up with a handwritten transcript. I thought: there's got to be a tool that will do this automatically. Then along came Descript! Descript is a pretty robust tool for editing video and audio. They seem to be headed toward making it a full featured tool that can do it all. However, my background is in Adobe Premiere Pro, and right now it's not worth my time and energy to learn to use Descript instead. But Descript has been a very helpful supplement.

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.

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.

Captioning for one. Transcripts for content repurposeing. Fast video output.

I got this tool for captioning initially, now I use it for all my videos. It's easy to use and the support was good. I also found creative ways to use the timeline to animate images. The control over audio gain, compression etc.

No COPY and PASTE function for video clips. How clips are pinned is still a bit of a mystery to me. Inability to save editing templates. No green screen support. Why do clips shorten from the back?

I love that Descript makes editing video and audio content so easy. And the transcriptions are so accurate it's scary! This software has saved me countless hours but more importantly removes so many barriers that keep people from getting started with creating video and audio content.

The editor UI is a bit clunky and compressed, I feel like the editor area should be larger which might make it even easier to use.

It's been wonderful. Since I discovered this at Podcast Movement in 2019 it's revolutionized production on the show. I've also used it to in my day job too to help my company do training videos. It's a software I use everyday.

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)

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.

Descript has really changed the way I produce podcasts and other media. It gives me more control and helps complete many tasks at once. I like that I can get a transcript, and edit the text AND audio at the same time. I haven't even used all the features available, but excited to work with more video projects in Descript.

What I like the most about using Descript, is that it allows me to use 1 tool for many of my needs. Previously I would have to use 3-4 different sites/tools to get the job done. It also allows me to make media (podcasts) more on my own time, instead of relying on freelancers and others.

It does seem to take a lot for my computer to process using Descript. I haven't run into any issues yet and have an upgraded computer, but could see an issue if I'm traveling or had less capacity.

The work involved in keeping audio and the content it represented connected in my mind was overwhelming before Descript. The result was that edits that might have improved my podcast ended up not happening due to time constraints. Not only has Descript saved me time, but made the final product more coherent and stronger.

The speed with which I can turn recorded audio into something I can meaningfully edit from without having to listen and re-listen and try to keep audio sections in mind.

I would like additional audio processing options (AU plug-in support?), and there are still times where a new update will significantly slow down the application. The ability to watch / listen to published pages on mobile still seems somewhat lacking.