We’ve made some big changes to working with Scenes and adding Layouts. First, you’ll notice that the term “template” has been replaced with the term Layout pack. A Layout pack contains individual layouts which are organized by Scene-type (i.e. Title, Lower Third, 3-camera etc.)

As a refresher, Scenes are divisions in your timeline that represent changes to your visual layout.

We’ll preselect a default layout pack, but you can click Change layout pack to visit the Gallery, view your Private custom layout packs, or view packs available from your Drive. Each layout has a number of different styles that you can view by hovering over the Layout card and clicking See More.

There’s a handy search bar, and we pre-filter your layouts to only show layouts that match the amount of layers in your composition (i.e. If you only have 1 camera file, we won’t show multicam layouts unless you toggle off the filter.)

The 3-dot menu on this panel these options:

If you don’t see them right away, you will by the time version 109 is released.

We’ve added a new Scene toolbar under the Canvas anytime a scene is selected. You can use it to swap layouts on the fly, adjust transitions, or add backgrounds to your scene. This toolbar also shows the current layout-type for easy reference

If you’re having deja vu, this was announced and rolled back a few months ago.

There is also an option to Add scene from the Script toolbar. This will take you straight into the new Layout picker panel so you can quickly build your project from scratch before you’ve added any content or quickly apply layouts to you script by highlighting each scene-to-be.

We’ve refreshed our collection of premade Layout packs (FKA templates,) adding newly designed packs, redesigned packs, and removing some layout packs that simply won’t be missed.

Here are some of the new packs, which sound tasty and look great:

You can locate the gallery by clicking "Change layout pack" from the scene panel.

With all the updates to working with Scenes and Layouts, we’ve added a new type of Transition animation that was created to save you mountains of time. Smart transitions apply automatically to all visual layers in a scene, and select appropriate crossfades, zooms, wipes etc. to the Scene transition. This transition effect comes applied automatically to some of our default layout packs, or you can add it manually from the Scene panel on the sidebar.

You can now create translated dubbing and captions for Chinese (Mandarin,) Japanese, and Korean. These are in the same list along side our existing translation options. These languages also feature native sounding speakers for Business and Enterprise plans.

Eye contact - our tool that draws the speakers eyes to the camera at all times - is now out of Beta. This just means that we’ve observed the number of bugs and other errors to be low enough that the feature is considered stable. As an added benefit, this effect now processes instantly when using the Web or upgraded Desktop version of Descript.

Business an Enterprise users will be getting an improved training model when generating AI speakers. This updated and improved model creates more natural sounding custom AI speakers. Any existing voices will be retrained using the new speaker model so the benefits are back-ported.

For Enterprise users:

On February 11th, our custom AI speakers are getting a major upgrade that will deliver voices with more natural speech with better intonation and pacing*.

These upgrades also bring faster text-to-speech generation, and add support for custom AI speakers in 19 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Malay, Norwegian, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish.

You can hear a before and after sample below. This voice was trained first on our old model, and then retrained with the upgraded model. Have a listen:

If you prefer to opt out you can let us know by submitting a ticket to our support team.

*Please note that these upgrades will apply to Text to Speech - not Regenerate.

We’ve made some major improvements to working with Text elements like captions and overlays.

Here are the details:

And finally, adding periods to abbreviations and numbers will no longer add a line break to captions. This would normally be in the bug fixes section, but it was such a long standing issue that we thought you’d like to know that it is finally fixed.

Descript now automatically detects and transcribes the correct language of your audio, making it easier to work with content in different languages. When uploading new files, "Auto" is now the default language option in the transcription settings.

Existing users who have already set their preferred transcription language won't be affected by this change. You can still manually select a specific language from the dropdown menu in the transcription settings, or set a specific default language in the general Settings menu.

You can now add a blur effect to the background of speaker focused videos. This can be toggled on from the Layer menu for any video track, and will blur out everything behind the speaker. There is an intensity slider for more or less blur. Please note, this only works with human speakers. Pets, inanimate objects, and ghostly apparitions will be blurred as if they are part of the background.

Generating text-to-speech is now supported in 19 languages, and we will auto detect the language of the text that is entered. You can enter TTS in: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Czech, Dutch, Romanian, Turkish, Danish, Malay, Finnish, Hungarian, Norwegian, Slovak, Croatian, Swedish.

Our translation powers when using stock speakers has expanded from 5 supported languages, to 21 supported languages. The full list of languages that support dubbing: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hindi, Polish, Czech, Dutch, Romanian, Turkish, Greek, Danish, Malay, Finnish, Hungarian, Norwegian, Slovak, Croatian, Swedish.

For Business and Enterprise users, the following languages will also have the benefit of our new Recommended voices which are designed specifically for them: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (BR), Polish, Dutch, Hindi, Turkish, and Swedish.

This brings the total number of languages with Recommended voices to 10.

With our first update back from the holidays, we’re adding a new way to export your translated compositions in bulk, retiring jibber jabber, making some small tweaks in the editor, and fixing a number of bugs.

You can now export all of your translated compositions in a batch process. We’ve added checkboxes to the Language selection list on the Export tab, so just select all the translated versions you’d like exported, and they’ll be automatically queued up and processed. A great time saver on the path to expanding your audience.

We’ve made it easier to understand when you’re nearing your text-to-speech limit by eliminating Jibber Jabber (replacing random words with nonsense when you’ve used your balance.) Now, we’ll simply stop generating new TTS, and you can increase your monthly limits by upgrading if you need more time. You’ll hit this prompt and click or dismiss it.

You’ll only hit this once, and then be met with a smaller prompt as a reminder that you are out of text-to-speech minutes.

We’ve added a new layer type in the Elements panel called Placeholder layers. These layers are designed to be used with the Replace media function we added a few weeks back, and are the perfect way to rough in your projects, templates, or layouts until you’re ready to swap in your final video or file.

Like any other layer type, Placeholder layers have customizable properties, including access to opacity, borders, and animations from the Layers panel. It also includes one special property exclusive to the Placeholder layer type: , where you can leave yourself a reminder about what this layer is going to be.

When you’re ready to swap in your final content, just select the Placeholder layer and click Add media or select Replace media from the right-click menu.

Translation in multiple languages can now be done all at once with this handy dropdown.

Your translations will then be available from within the composition view using the dropdown menu in the upper left corner of the Composition. When using this for captions-only, the completion time is extremely fast.

If you go back for more translations, we’ll mark any languages you’ve already generated with a green dot.

If you submit a new translation for one of existing languages, it will overwrite it with a new version. This will also overwrite any corrections you’ve made. We’ll show this warning just in case.

We hope to add the option to export translations in batches in the future as well.

There are new high quality stock speakers available exclusively for dubbing in our 4 supported languages: French, Italian, German, and Spanish

These new stock voices, provided by 11Labs are designed for the target language, and will provide much better results than our standard sock voices when working with a non-English language translation. These voices will be rolling out slowly, but you should have access by the end of this week.

Note: These new voices are available on Business and Enterprise plans only.

We’ve added a new feature to Labs called Smart transitions. This is a new style of transition that can be added between scenes. This is a powerful tool for transitioning between different layouts, as smart transition will smoothly rearrange, zoom, and fade elements on the fly.

Add fades ON: Fades are added between non-contiguous layers (i.e. two separate clips.) Fades will NOT be added in contiguous clips that cross the scene barrier.

Add fades OFF: We will not fade any layers.

We’re excited to get some early feedback on this feature so please give it a try and let us know what you think using the Feedback button in the Settings → Labs menu.

Descript’s new Desktop experience is also available from the Labs menu. This new desktop app put the speed and performance improvements of our web version into a local package. If you’ve been using the Desktop preview, this is the soon-to-be-final version.

Be among the first to switch over and enjoy the benefits.

We’re making a change to the terminology and interface around replacing your script with AI Speech. The term Overdub is going away, and it will now be considered a part of the Regenerate feature. When you highlight a section of your Script, you’ll see an option on the Script toolbar labeled Regenerate.

This will launch a modal with the highlighted text present. If you do not edit the text, it will regenerate the section with an AI voice that sounds like the speaker. This is great for changing the tone or delivery without altering the exact words that were used.

When you edit the text, you’ll be required to provide voice authorization for that speaker. This works exactly as Overdub works today, just with a different label and streamlined interface. You’ll also notice that the option to Replace with a recording has been moved into the Record panel. Just highlight the text you want replaced with a recording an open the record panel to access this feature.

If you’re wondering why we did this: we’ve found that many users find the term Overdub confusing, since it already has a specific meaning in production circles. Renaming it to Regenerate makes it clearer what it will do.