Descript is the world’s first audio word processor. Get fast, accurate transcriptions - and then edit audio by editing text. Descript is a toolkit of superpowers for people that work with voice audio.
Hello! Andrew (CEO) here. After almost three years in the making, it's a real thrill to launch Descript. If you work with voice audio in any form, Descript is probably what you've been dreaming of. Yes, we do transcription (both automatic and human-powered), but that's just the starting point - Descript's superpower is what happens after the transcript - you can edit audio by editing text.
You can download Descript for free - sign up with this link and you'll get 100 free minutes of transcription: https://app.descript.com/r/HyCCc....
More on Descript's backstory: https://medium.com/descript/intr...
And a post about automatic transcription accuracy: https://medium.com/descript/comp...
Thanks, happy as always to answer questions.
@andrewmason can you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by editing audio when editing text? Can I edit out certain parts of a podcast if I delete a few sentences?
@lamaalrajih@paulodef yeah, kinda - you can type words and it'll generate synthesized speech. Nice if you're making edits and then you can drop recorded audio of the pickups to replace the scratch audio later: http://help.descript.com/script-...
I've been interested in podcasts as a consumer for years, waiting for the more of radio's "share of ear" (is that a term?) to be replaced by podcasts. We're starting to see that happen as the industry is expected to double this year and the adoption of voice-based hardware such as Echo's and Google Home will accelerate this in addition to open new opportunities for makers to create audio-based experiences. But today the tools are super rudimentary, creating an opportunity to create the pick axes for our future in voice and audio technology.
/end rant
Descript looks super useful, a tool that was incubated inside of Andrew and team's location-aware audio platform, Detour.
I am producing a podcast for Slate on a small budget, with a 2 person team. I would not have taken this on without access to Descript. It has made a stressful chore, an enjoyable endeavour - it frees your inner artist by removing monotony.
Pros:
Truly a bicycle for the mind. Let's one person do what required a team to do before.
I'd love to see this work great, but there have been so many teams trying to solve this, and no one is there yet. (I just did a round of transcription with Trint and had to do a ton of cleanup after). I'll wait on early reviews before I check it out.
@andrewmason unrelated from the product itself:
you had an amazing approach to progressive equity for your last projects.
did you do the same approach for descript? and what was your experience with it?
Hey Andrew,
I've done a few interviews over time for various publications and recorded them and found a huge pain point to be going back and listening them to transcribe notes and key points.
Hopefully Descript can solve some of those issues and expedite that process!! Could be a huge tool for journalists, if that's the case.
@benmlevy yes - we've been working along side journalists / radio producers for the last several years while building Detour, and became very familiar with what a pain this is. Check out this "manage source material" video: https://descript-1.wistia.com/me...
Congrats @andrewmason and Detour/Descript team. Audio needs a lot more TLC and we @adorilabs are big fans of what you guys are working on.
Was this based on Steve Rubin's PhD work under Dr. Maneesh Agrawala called Audio Stories (http://vis.berkeley.edu/papers/a...). If so, it is awesome to see academic research commercialized this way.
@adorilabs@kartikparija yes! @revestubin joined us ~ 3 years ago after the Detour team was inspired by his ideas, and has been one of two people (along with David Williams, who has no online presence that I know of) that have been instrumental in bringing the product to life.
@adorilabs@andrewmason Oh that is so cool. Almost 2 years to the day (I just checked!), I had emailed @revestubin saying how I had read his graduate work on Speecheditor, and was blown away by it. I am so pleased to see this go forward to the real world to create real value.
We should chat sometime about ways to collaborate. You are likely to be interested in what we do with audio as well.
Once again well done, and good luck with everything.
Cheers,
Kartik
I will be using this program extensively to transcribe my podcasts and video lectures. I can see this as a game changer. Love the fact that I can take out all the verbal miscues and know where they are by word or phrase. Bravo!
Pros:
Great product. I clipped a portion of an iPhone taped lecture and threw it into the program. Worked quickly and accurately. Very helpful.
Cons:
More extensive help files would be nice. But that will come with time.
This looks great. The things I liked about it are:
1. The transcription of the audio file seemed pretty accurate, which is not always the case with other transcription tools that I tried.
2. The price point seems right at $10/month
3. The UI/UX is great and provides an intuitive and easy-to-use interface.
The things that seem lacking are support of multiple tracks. For my podcast, I capture the audio from each person on separate tracks, so I will have to merge them outside of Descript before being able to use Descript. Would be great if there was some functionality to merge tracks within Descript.
this looks incredible! any plans to make the transcriptions usable as captions (i.e. with time codes in the transcription file)? a bunch of youtubers would use this instead of rev.com
I’m a huge fan of Andrew’s and Descript. Descript makes it was easier to edit audio content than traditional audio editors. It’s particularly better for folks making podcasts, or audio guides. I’ll also call out the app’s polish, which makes it even more of a delight to use.
Maybe this could use something like Lyrebird.ai to create voice transcriptions of added text!
Also, would be cool if it could identify voices and tag pieces of text with the speaker!
(Just spitballin' here! Great work so far!)
1/ What differentiates this from jotengine.com
2/ How do you moat this business against competition?
3/ How many podcasters out there actually make money that would use this?
(technically you can scrape all new podcasts and get their contact info, that seems simple enough, so you can certainly email all of them to sell this to them.....)
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I am producing a podcast for Slate on a small budget, with a 2 person team. I would not have taken this on without access to Descript. It has made a stressful chore, an enjoyable endeavour - it frees your inner artist by removing monotony.
Pros:Truly a bicycle for the mind. Let's one person do what required a team to do before.
Cons:Can't think of any
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I will be using this program extensively to transcribe my podcasts and video lectures. I can see this as a game changer. Love the fact that I can take out all the verbal miscues and know where they are by word or phrase. Bravo!
Pros:Great product. I clipped a portion of an iPhone taped lecture and threw it into the program. Worked quickly and accurately. Very helpful.
Cons:More extensive help files would be nice. But that will come with time.
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