The AI tool Descript as a powerful video editor

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Introduction

Nice to have you with us again for another episode of Digital4Productivity. And you know that I occasionally do a “Behind the Scenes” here, where I explain to you what my workflows are like and how I work. And a great tool that I got to know last year at the American NSA Convention, the National Speakers Association Convention, is Descript.

The idea of Descript

What is the idea behind this tool? I don’t know how you do it when you’re editing videos and you want to cut things exactly to certain text passages, then it’s always a huge fiddly job because you have to go back and forth and back and forth again and again to make the whole thing work so wonderfully. And exactly, wouldn’t it be nice if you could say, I have a text and I can simply edit this text like a Word document and the corresponding video is then cut. That’s exactly the idea behind Descript. In other words, the idea of Descript is that you upload a video to Descript and Descript first makes a transcript of it for you.

Practical use of Descript

The first time it asks you in which language this video was recorded, you should also set this up so that it always asks this at the beginning. Because if it recognizes the wrong language, it will be difficult. Especially if you switch between English technical terms and German every now and then, it will quickly get confused and if the wrong source language is set, it won’t get a good result. So it’s very important to choose the right language and then he will make you a transcript. And then of course you can also use the whole thing as subtitles. But the big advantage is that you can then simply say, firstly, all the “ums”, all the other sounds that don’t belong in there, you can delete them. Secondly, you can then use text-based editing. This means that you can simply copy things back and forth like in a text, change the order, throw things out of the text and it takes the whole thing and cuts the video accordingly. What I find very nice in practice is that you can also mark text passages, for example, and then say, add them to a new composition, that is, to a new composition, to a new video. Then you can make several clips from one overall video. And then later in the text, if you have something else on the same topic, you can add things there again, for example, and when you’re finished, you can say, publish it for me. And then you can say, okay, I only want it for myself, or you can even say you can generate a link where it is available to everyone who has this link, or even publicly.

This is my workflow

I usually do this by downloading it and uploading it to Vimeo. You can also use it to create subtitles, for example, not with emojis yet, but at least with titles. This means, for example, that I recently cut out reels from a one-hour Lunch & Learn livestream for my wife, who had given a presentation there, and the same for me. And we had six reels for my wife and ten reels for me. This means that you can simply cut out the exact things you need based on the text. Now many people say, wait a minute, there are also AI tools that do that automatically. Yes, but to be honest, I think that manually picking out the sentences that you really want to be crisp is usually a bit better than the AI-generated things. That’s why I’m a big fan of having AI-generated subtitles generated. And the quality is very good and the texts can be edited manually.

With Descript, by the way, if a term is incorrectly recognized there, it can also be corrected and, as in a kind of search and replace function, the whole thing can then be done across the entire document. ChatGPT, for example, often recognizes with “JOT” instead of “C-H-A-T”. In other words, it assumes that it is a jumbo jet and not “Chat-GPT. Of course, this is partly due to my pronunciation, which I like to work with regularly, but also to terms that are perhaps not so clear.

What versions of Descript are available?

The tool is designed so that you can use it in different ways. You can test it for free first. There is then the hobby version for 12 USD per month. You have already removed the watermark. You can do 10 hours per month there. You can even upload in 1,080 P accordingly. You have the option of making up to 30 hours in Creator mode and up to 40 hours per month in Business mode and you can also invite several people to work with you. For me, as I said, it’s a really, really great tool. The great thing is that it’s also very easy to edit. Of course, you can also use DaVinci resolve from Black Magic for text-based editing, which is great if you want to change the color coding in the video, if you want to do image editing. Wonderful. For me, the use case is often that I say I want to cut things into smaller things. Another use case is that I give an online seminar, for example I recently gave a ChatGPT seminar for advanced users and of course I always addressed people by name in the seminar. And then in the recording, I practically threw out all the names. You can also cut out the reference to the breaks and things like that that you don’t need afterwards. Or if you give presentations and you anonymize them in the sections, wonderful, oDaVinciResolveder if there are questions that come up in certain areas, then you can assign them to the exact topics again afterwards.

So Descript, for me an absolute recommendation. You have the option of using the whole thing there via the web interface or you have the option of using the whole thing via a Mac application, via a program.

Of course, you can also have Descript build the clips automatically using AI. So if you say, wait a minute, I don’t want to do it manually, that works just as well. You can also do multitrack audio editing when editing podcasts, i.e. you can make several tracks there accordingly. You also have the option of making recordings from Riverside , as you know it. You have the option of doing things for screen recording. So there are a whole host of use cases that you have with you.

You also have the option of generating YouTube descriptions from it, show notes, translations. So there’s a whole host of things, including green screen afterwards, eye contact, in other words many of these things. You can optimize the sound again. What I really like to use it for, as I said, is for text-based editing, and it’s extremely easy.

Descript vs. HappyScribe

I’m also considering whether I might use the whole thing instead of HappyScribe in the future. It’s also a great tool that I’ve been using for years to automatically generate subtitles. But I’ll be happy to report on this later from experience.

Speaking of reporting, please feel free to give me feedback on great tools that I may not know about. I also learn from time to time and, as you know, the idea of this podcast is to provide a mixture of digital know-how and do-how, because I believe both are important. On the one hand, it’s important that you take a strategic approach to the whole topic of AI and IT and think, okay, where can I optimize processes? Where can I improve my customer service and become even more profitable? And where can I perhaps build up completely new business areas with new technology, especially AI? On the other hand, of course, it’s also a good idea to take a look at new technology and think about how I can use it. In other words, to follow the rough structure of the balanced scorecard or the strategy map, to say I have goals somewhere, to say which processes do I need to change and how do I need to develop my systems and people in order to achieve them? And vice versa, what new systems might there be, what new employees might I have and what resources. How can we optimize the processes in order to achieve our goals even better? So, you should first and foremost focus on the strategic side, but at the same time you should always have a small playground to see what you can use there. And Descript, as I said, is a great tool that I’ve discovered, where I say, hey, wait a minute, I can optimize the process of editing videos again, save time and thus have more time for personal consultation with my customers.

Conclusion

With this in mind, use technology to become even more successful in business, because that’s exactly what I do to help my customers and, above all, you. See you next time.

Yours, Thorsten Jekel.

Also available in: Deutsch

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