Dec 23: Impossibly futuristic way of editing audio and video. Like a doc! 🤯

Descript is a collaborative audio/video editor. It includes transcription, a screen recorder, publishing, and some mind-bendingly useful AI tools. It can replace Loom, Otter.ai, and much more.

It is great for teams and online instructors. And a no-brainer for anyone planning to start a podcast.

A. The Problem and The Pitch

How do you share your thoughts? 💭

If you’re writing a lot, you should check out Flowrite (Dec 16). But increasingly, we are using audio and video to communicate.

Zoom recordings, Looms, audio notes 🎙️ However, editing audio is tedious and hard. So we give up on it. But it doesn’t need to be 😫

Getting the timing just right and matching narration to the right moment (as you present your screen or otherwise) makes sharing your thoughts pretty daunting. And traditional editing tools don't make it any easier!

What do you prefer?

📝 Editing a doc
~OR~
📹 Editing a video

Now, imagine if you could edit a video like you edit a doc. Almost effortless.

🎉 That’s Descript 🎉

It’s like an AI clone of your voice.

👉 Nothing tells the story better than this advert. In under 3 mins.

Here’s how your workflow can look like with Descript:

• Step 1: 🎙️ You record audio/video with or without Descript

• Step 2: 📄 Descript generates a transcription for you

• Step 3: 👾 Remove any errors like ums/ahs and type in any additional text ‘you wanted to say’

• Step 4: 🧙 Descript will fix the recording with your voice! Like magic.

This makes creation simpler. And recording more listenable.

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B. What's special?

Descript is super powerful because you can edit your audio by editing the transcript of the audio, allowing you to edit words instead of combing through milliseconds of audio clips.

This means no more hours spent trying to line up clips perfectly in a timeline - now you can focus on what matters most: getting your message across.

If you edit anything (audio, video, podcasts), this has the potential to save you ⏳ hours and hours. You can also collaborate with your team to fix your audio!

1. ⚡ Screen recording that gives studio-quality output: Loom on steroids. It’s the fast, easy way to edit and share screen recordings. You can not only share recordings directly (as in Loom), but also have embedded transcripts next to your video and remove filler words like ums and you knows.

   

   Credits: Descript. Communicate with video without losing the flexibility of text. With a single click you can remove not only ums and ahs, but "you know,", "like," "so," repeated words, and a dozen other filler words that are contextually sensitive. Descript can tell the difference between "do you know the time?" and "I'm, you know, excited about this feature.” 👀

2. 🦸 Editing superpowers with ‘Overdub’: No need to stop when you make a mistake! You can fix those audio mistakes by typing. Descript learns your voice, so the next time you say ‘crypto’ instead of ‘web3’, you can just type-correct it to generate audio that sounds just like you!

   

3. 📽️ Professional-grade video editing for anyone who’s created a doc: You can edit video by editing the transcript. As easy as that. With the addition of everything you'd expect from a sophisticated video editor - from transitions, multi-tracks, adding titles & keyframe automation.

   

   Descript makes it even better by removing any background noise to give you studio-quality sound by enhancing your speech. In a single click. Check out this epic feat here.

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C. What's more?

1. 🏃‍♂️ Here’s the complete starters guide to using Descript.

2. 🚀 Why now? As ‘The Verge’ puts it:

   The work of speech synthesis has improved massively in recent years, thanks to advances in machine learning. Previously, the most realistic synthetic voices were created by recording audio of a human voice actor, cutting up their speech into component sounds, and splicing these back together like letters in a ransom note to form new words.
   👉 Now, neural networks can be trained on unsorted data of their target voice to generate raw audio of someone speaking from scratch. The end results are faster, easier, and more realistic to boot.

3. 🤩 As the creator economy grows & the need for businesses to stand out in crowded industries with epic content - anything that makes content curation accessible to the less tech-savvy, is a huge win (Look at Canva). However, even for the super content curators among us, editing can be highly tedious & time-consuming. Descript is going to be a game-changer!

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D. What’s next in the 🗓️ App Advent Calendar?

🥳 Dec 24: Fun video messaging for work. Unlike Zoom. Unlike Loom.

🎄 Dec 26: Short note on 1 surprise personal app + 3 apps for creators and founders

And then we resume in Jan 2022. We will publish 2-4 articles every month on more tools, trends, offers, and stories to keep you ahead of the curve. What more would you like to hear about through 2022?