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How to make your podcast workflow more efficient with Descript

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Episode Summary

As the podcasting space has developed shows have also evolved beyond audio Today a podcast comprises audio video and written content But as our host Tristan Pelligrino explains the traditional audio editing workflow is completely broken At least it was until Descript came along

Descript is at the center of the creative process at Motion Given the importance of Descript to the podcasting production process Tristan has a chat with the folks over at Descript about its evolution

In this episode Tristan is joined by Harmony Jiroudek and Kevin OConnell Harmony is the Customer Success Manager and Kevin is the Product Specialist at Descript The three discuss features recently released and then identify what users can expect in season three

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

Name: Kevin OConnell

What he does: Kevin is a Product Specialist at Descript

Company: Descript

Noteworthy: Kevin is a musician audio engineer educator and arts advocate

Key Insights

  • Descript is especially proud of its social video features Descript is more than an app specializing in transcription As their customer base grew so did their offering Now just before the launch of season three and its new features Kevin and Harmony discuss the social video features that are in store for Descript users More creative control over what your social videos look like Its been a cool transition to see folks that are audio creators and producers get their start into video editing that they didnt have access to before So people that make audio-only podcasts can select a section of their show clip it to a new composition and add a bunch of those social video features And they are now a video editor says Kevin
  • Our mission is efficiency and time-saving Creating a podcast for instance involves many steps and various tools As Harmony explains Descript focuses on making editing straightforward A big part of our mission towards the end of last year was to talk to as many teams as possible And one of the main pain points was the time suck of downloading and uploading files and using secondary systems So through lots of conversations youre like Okay we should remove some of that friction What if you could go from your recording system of choice directly into Descript and continue focusing on the story without losing that momentum of moving from one system to another
  • We are looking forward to the release of Paste Script Track That said Harmony explains how this feature can benefit users Especially for teams trying to figure out how to bring more of their process into Descript one of the nuts weve been trying to crack is how can we help teams do more of their pre-production process in Descript And I think Paste Script Track does exactly that It allows them to lay out their canvas lay out their story and get everything exactly where it needs to be And then when you have that final recorded audio you click Paste and youre done

Episode Highlights

The workflow before and after the release of the Edit in Descript feature

With SquadCast and Riverside we have our remote recording solutions We have guests on a show and you record essentially from a host account and download all those files after And then maybe youre going to iZotope perhaps to clean up some stuff maybe youre going to Descript to start editing right away run studio sound and clean up the audio

If youre going to use Pro Tools Audition Logic or whatever else but youre downloading all those files waiting for that download to complete then youre reimporting or re-uploading those files wherever youre going

With the Edit in Descript integration you can start in SquadCast or Riverside and finish your recording Click the Edit in Descript button and immediately populate a new project with all your files and start importing and transcribing within a couple of minutes Kevin explains

Descript local storage

The local storage in Descript is a temporary download to your machine and its to improve the playback and editing experience So when you import into Descript were syncing with the cloud and depending on your preferences you might have all of your original files downloaded for each project

In that case you might take up some hard drive space or have the ticker selected for optimizing storage Youll have some optimized assets that will be much smaller in file size but still allow you to play back with ease

When you go to timeline export if youre going to Audition Pro Tools Logic or any of the video export partners youre going to download all of your original files that have been synced from the cloud So its a way to free up some space and give you that great editing and playback experience says Kevin

Using Edit in Descript when creating content via Restream or Captivate

With Restream in particular one thing that we were hearing is Okay great I have all these high-fidelity video recordings We record them in Restream Can I take this hour-long two-hour-long stream and quickly repurpose it get it out get pieces out to my social media team and start disseminating that information

So it works similarly In Restream you go to your video storage your recordings and click the Edit in Descript button in the background It automatically creates a project and you designate where you want the project to live in your drives workspace

It starts the automatic transcription in the background If its multiple video files it will automatically generate a sequence and then per usual it will open up a project Youve got your script that you can start working with And then obviously we start working from the timeline as well

With Captivate its a little bit different its the reverse process So youve got your podcast in Captivate and lets say you have an interview that you did a year ago and youre like We need to update this quote or this stat You can go into Captivate go to the episode click Edit in Descript and it will open up the episode in Descript And from there you can make updates explains Harmony

Presenting a new feature Paste Script Track

In Descript currently as were writing scripts and adding in different pins that could be images B-roll or other music were adding as beds intro or outro music whatever it might be when we do any copying and pasting between the temporary script and what we may have as recorded audio or video we lose some of those pins in their placement

That is no longer the case Now with Paste Script Track you can sketch out your ideas add different pins and different layers and elements and paste your recording on top of that and it will keep the placement of all of your pins music images B-roll etc So that allows you to sketch out the visual and audio elements before youre tracking or recording and keep all the placement of those pieces says Kevin

The difference between using a stock voice and a custom synthetic AI overdub voice

We have a handful of stock voices in Descript which are great Theyre real voices of actors we hired some years ago to create these overdub voices and they sound great I use them A lot of other customers and teammates use them for more generic content whether its going to be live or not where they just need a real human voice

But the difference between using a stock voice and a custom-created synthetic AI overdub voice is the ability to create multiple styles So being able to read sections in different styles and you can create that from the training data you input for an overdub

Also for a branded podcast or a podcast with a specific host or a narrator having the tone and pacing set by that persons voice helps a lot and hearing it in another voice in one of the stock voices might change the outcome and some of your editorial decisions that are made during that early editing and review process notes Kevin

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