Best Practices, Tips, & Tricks
Miscellaneous information I've gleaned from Descript tutorials and help articles, or from my own use of the tool.
Sharing Media across Projects
Each Media Library is specific to one Project, not shared across Projects.
However, you can maintain a master Project containing material commonly used across projects and copy material from one Project to another (which is generally faster than uploading the same material into each project)..
However, you can maintain a master Project containing material commonly used across projects and copy material from one Project to another (which is generally faster than uploading the same material into each project)..
Transcripts
“Nearly all issues with transcriptions stalling at some percentage are caused by an unstable internet connection.” (Link)
Transcript Editing
I prefer to Ignore filler words (Edit > Filler Words > Ignore) rather than to Delete them, because sometimes Descript transcription misidentifies an actual word (e.g., "I'm") for a filler word and if they are Ignored rather than Deleted, they are easier to reinstate.
After you've exported the transcript to Word, you can easily eliminate the Ignored / struck out words by selecting Edit > Find > Advanced Find and Replace > Replace ... with your cursor in the Find what field, in the Replace section, select Font, then under Effects, click the box next to Strikethrough until a checkmark displays. (If the Replace section doesn't appear for you, click the downward-pointing arrow at the bottom of the Find and Replace pop-up.) Make sure nothing is entered in the Replace with field, then hit Replace All.
After you've exported the transcript to Word, you can easily eliminate the Ignored / struck out words by selecting Edit > Find > Advanced Find and Replace > Replace ... with your cursor in the Find what field, in the Replace section, select Font, then under Effects, click the box next to Strikethrough until a checkmark displays. (If the Replace section doesn't appear for you, click the downward-pointing arrow at the bottom of the Find and Replace pop-up.) Make sure nothing is entered in the Replace with field, then hit Replace All.
If you encounter a word that Descript has gotten wrong in one place, it's likely to have gotten it wrong elsewhere as well--for example, it always renders my first name as Maddie. You'll save time by using search and replace to fix it everywhere rather than fixing the occurrences one at a time.
Need to adjust where a speaker label lands? Hover over the speaker label until the six dot grab icon appears and drag the speaker label to the desired location. If Descript has inserted an incorrect speaker label, just hover over it and click the X to delete it.
If you have to interrupt an editing session and close down Descript, use a Marker (Insert > Marker or from the + icon at the top of the transcript window) to flag where you left off. Markers will not appear in your text / transcript export.
Reducing Transcript Processing Time During Editing
One of my frustrations with Descript has been the processing delays while editing. I would find that an editing session would start out with Descript processing an edit pretty quickly, but that the processing would become slower and slower during the session, to the point where I would need to shut down Descript and restart (which sometimes helped and sometimes didn't).
Descript support speculated that the slowness of the processing could be a result of the number of edits I was making. I suggested, and they concurred, that a way around this might be to take the following steps when processing gets bogged down:
Give it a try and let me know if it works for you!
Descript support speculated that the slowness of the processing could be a result of the number of edits I was making. I suggested, and they concurred, that a way around this might be to take the following steps when processing gets bogged down:
- Duplicate the Composition.
- Flatten the copy (click the three dot icon to the right of the Composition name and select Flatten Tracks).
- Copy the the flattened file to a new project (since the current project / composition will still contained the edits).
Give it a try and let me know if it works for you!
Transcript Processing
Descript estimates the time to process a transcript as ~2 ½ minutes for a 60 minute file and as 2 minutes or less for any length file.
Playback
After selecting a word by double-clicking it in the transcript, before hitting play, check to make sure that the word highlighted in the transcript is also highlighted in the Wordbar. If not, try again; usually they will sync up on a second double-click.
