How to create shareable social videos with Descript

Episode Summary

Descript is a very unique platform that allows you to record, transcribe, edit, and mix your audio and video files. On top of that, it has everything you need to create a podcast from scratch.

But innovation never stops at Descript. Their latest update or Season 2 (as they refer to it) comes with a lot of exciting features and more possibilities for customization.

In this episode of Recorded Content, our host Tristan Pelligrino welcomes Harmony Jiroudek and Kevin O’Connell. Harmony is the Customer Success Manager, and Kevin is a Product Specialist at Descript. They talk about the newest features that we can expect from Descript’s Season 2 update.

Guest Profile

Name: Harmony Jiroudek
What she does: Harmony is the Customer Success Manager at Descript.
Company: Descript
Noteworthy: Harmony is an accomplished mezzo-soprano and has participated in several American and world premiere performances.

Key Insights

What can we expect from Descript’s Season 2 update? Descript has just published its latest app update, which includes interesting new features and editing possibilities. Since the Season 2 update is all about social media features, users can now expect a lot of valuable options for creating engaging audio and video content. Harmony says, "Season 2 is focused around social video features — transforming audio into engaging video content. We also incorporated some faster — that we call ‘blazing-fast’ — publishing speeds, so you can publish your composition or screen recording to render really fast, probably, at least three times faster than what you had previously been seeing. So, in short, these seasons are really meant to be themed around these larger concepts in terms of taking existing content and bringing it to the next level."
The two best Descript updates for podcasters. There are unlimited possibilities for making a podcast on Descript. But the latest update gives you even more options for leveraging your podcast content and customizing your audiograms. Harmony talks about the fancy caption and audiogram customization updates. "One of the features that, I think, has always been appreciated is the fancy caption feature. And I think now, with the word-level animation option, it brings this new level of accessibility to end-users. [...] And then, especially for our folks who are producing podcasts, [it supports] just being able to have that next level of customization with creating audio or videograms and truly repurposing your content in a meaningful and engaging way. I would say those are the two things that are really resonating with folks."
Descript Season 2 brings new ways to customize audiograms and social video clips. Harmony and Kevin share some insights into the latest Descript update. They say that the most significant change is around social video and that it will make podcasting and promotion a lot easier. Kevin explains, "We pulled all of these features into one bucket. We're calling it social video, and the ability to transform audio to video was a little ambiguous earlier — maybe, you'd have to bring in some B-roll of video and have the audio underline. Now it's as simple as saying, 'I have my podcast. Here's a section that I want to create an audiogram out of or a social clip out of. Clip that to a new composition and add one of the many features that are now included in this suite of social video assets.'"

“It’s really nice to see how people are supporting each other and educating themselves collaboratively.”

Harmony Jiroudek

Customer Success Manager

Descript

Episode Highlights

The Descript community is collaborative and supportive

Kevin explains, “I love searching through our Discord and seeing the interaction that’s happening and how folks in the Descript community are supporting one another — whether it’s looking for an editor or a consultant to help work on a piece, or someone with a sticky point in their workflow asking an open-ended question, or sharing how they’re doing a certain thing and getting all these different perspectives and ideas on how they can accomplish what they’re doing. It creates a great dialogue for folks that are all trying to do the same thing. They’re trying to make something cool that they care about. And it’s awesome to see people show each other how they are doing it.”

Project ownership on Descript

Harmony explains how much easier it is to transfer project ownership on Descript now. “Let’s say I’m offboarding from a company, I had an editor seat on my team drive, and I managed 20, 30 projects. Now I need to transfer that project ownership. Before, there wasn’t a way to do that. Now, I can go into those projects. I can transfer ownership to Kevin so that he can run with these projects and bring them to the finish line. So now there’s this more efficient way of offboarding from project to project, if needed.”

New features are focused on improving user experience

Kevin explains, “With the most recent release a couple of days ago, we’re focusing on some smaller fixes that are going to just improve quality of life. So you may or may not notice them, but they will help your experience. […] Going back to our social video components, there’s a bunch of aspects of our video editing that are going to improve quality of life — cropping videos, rotating clips, and a bunch of other features that are going to improve that workflow.”