What is Descript and How Can it Be Used to Teach? Tips & Tricks

With so many video/audio editing tools available around if I tell you that you can edit your video/audio files easily like as a document file, what is your reaction? Descript is an all in one video & audio editing tool which will make your life simple like editing a document. In this post we will have a look at What is Descript and How can it be used for teaching.

With the modern education tools, the teachers have to shuffle across many tools to make their online course including video, audio, presentations and other resources. While many teachers don’t face any problem in recording the videos, it is the editing part which proves to be difficult for many of them.

Descript is the solution to edit all your audio & video projects as it will help you get started very quickly and save you a lot of time. You can simply record your video and edit it in Descript like a document file. Descript, as the name suggests, also offers automatic transcription of audio.

You can use Descript if you are looking for easy to use tool for video editing, audio editing, trouble-free screen recording, podcast editing, make good subtitles, create a text-to-speech model of your voice, Remove noise, enhance speech and sound like a pro and many more features.

What is Descript?

Descript is an all in one video and audio editing and production tool that’s as easy as a doc. It also specialises in Podcast creation, specifically for groups.

Descript makes it easy to transcribe video & audio files into text. Simply create a project, select the file you want to transcribe, and wait a few seconds for your accurate transcription. Descript also makes it easy to correct any inaccuracies by removing the incorrect words, so you can quickly take your transcript from highly accurate to perfect.

The product features includes:

• Video Editing
• Audio Editing
• Multitrack editing and mixing
• Easy screen-recording
• Podcast Editing
• Create good subtitles
• Create a text-to-speech model of your voice,
• Remove noise, enhance speech and sound like a pro
• Remove all unnecessary words like ‘umm’, ‘uh’, ‘you know’ and other filler words from your video easily
• Create shareable pages for your audio/video with a click.

Descript comes in both web-based and desktop versions which makes it easy to use across devices. For educators, the features like creating their own speech model, easy screen recording and removing the filler words can be very handy.

How does Descript work?

To get started with Descript, you can sign up for the Free Plan. All you need to sign-up before downloading the software to get started. Once installed, you will see a few survey questions about your usage of the tool.

Once you are logged in, you will see a blank project page. You can click on New Project button to add a new Video or Audio Project. For this example, let me choose a Video Project. Once your project is created, you can:

• Choose a file to transcribe
• Start Recording
• Start Writing
• Start from a template

If you go ahead with recording, you will see the options to record Audio only, Camera or Screen. Once you drop a file, it will take sometime to create the transcribe but once it is ready you can easily remove all unnecessary words and shorten word gaps.3

Similarly, You can record the audio for your podcast as an individual or part of a group. The ability to collaborate, remotely, is a really powerful feature that students working on a project across locations outside of school hours could find very useful. The magic part comes after the recording is done which is to edit the audio and video in a timeline style.

It is then possible to export your project to various formats like Video, Audio, GIF’s, Timeline, Transcript as well as subtitles. You can also publish your project to YouTube, Wistia, Podcast.co, Buzzsprout, Blubrry or as a Web Link.

What are the best Descript features?

Descript is one of the tools which is easy to get started for new users. It offers intuitive controls without getting too complicated for the users. The best Descript features are:

• AI powered Transcription – The transcription of the audio or video is done via AI which is mostly correct without any problems.
• Overdub Voice Cloning – This allows you to offer quality voice corrections to audio recordings simply by typing the corrections. It will help you save a lot of time and avoid re-recordings hassles.
• Remove Noise and filler words – It is general tendency to use filler words while recording as we are not professional artists. Descript makes it easy to remove the filler words and shorten word gaps.
• Live collaboration – very useful for students collaborating on a single project.

How much does Descript cost?

While Descript offers you a free plan to get started easily, it offers several tiers of pricing which can be paid in Monthly or Annually. The different tiers are: Free, Creator, Pro and Enterprise.

Al plans include common features like Transcription, Editing, Screen Recording, Templates, Stock media and Captions. The annual plans offers you a 20% discount billed annually.

Free Plan

The free plan offers you a total transcription duration of 1 hour per month in 23 languages, 1 watermark free video export, 720p video export resolution, detection of 8+ speakers, dynamic captions, unlimited projects, animation and transitions, filler word removal of “um and “uh,” overdub voice to 1,000 word limit, Studio sound to 10 min, AI green screen up to 10 min, Cloud Storage of 5 GB, stock media library of first five search results, stock template library, collaboration and commenting.

Creator Plan

If you choose the Creator plan for $12/month (paid on Annual basis), you will get all the above plus – 100 GB cloud storage, 10 hr/month transcription hours, unlimited exports, 4K resolution, one hour of studio sound, one hour of AI background removal, first 12 search results of the stock media library, creation and sharing of templates.

Pro Plan

The next tier i.e. Pro Plan comes at $24/month (paid on annual basis) will includes all the above plus – 300 GB cloud storage, 30 hr/ month transcriptions hours, 18 filler words and repeated words, Unlimited Overdub, Unlimited AI Green Screen, Unlimited Studio Sound, Unlimited Stock Library, Custom font upload, 3 hours Video publishing duration limit, White labeled publish pages and Batch file export. It also comes with Custom drive & page branding.

Enterprise Plan

A Custom pricing plan for Enterprises is also available for teams of more than 10 users. The Enterprise plan gives you access to all Pro features plus a dedicated account representative, single sign on, overdub enterprise, Descript service agreement, security review, invoicing, onboarding, and training.

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