I am willing to bet that it would also do a good job of substituting and finding the right word when Descript doesn't "hear" the word in the transcript properly.

Because GPT3 based tools know language, they know which word should come next and they can also analyze a phrase for logic errors. This would be a powerful addition to Descript and would also cover the "grammarly" requirements.

J D: 👍👍👍

Felipe Matos: Agreed, and I use Antidote. They each have interesting features. Most work with web editors like chrome just fine, so if Descript can just provide a web-based script editor (which they probably need to do anyhow, if only to make it easier to do dictation with an iPhone and use editing on an iPhone), it will be very useful for all the language tools.

Andrew McMullen: Does Grammarly have an option, like Antidote, where you can create a new document and paste the text and it corrects the text for you so you can copy it back?

This is what I use, but Descript has a limitation where it can't work with more than 100 characters or something in the script view. And they only offer an Export transcript. The import seems to be "replace transcript", however, after you add inline comments and chapter markers and stuff, that becomes hard if not impossible to use.

Also becomes a little complicated if we want to keep all the ums and ahs. I think the work is all on Descript side.

I prefer option one because it would be fast and no need for copy paste. But I would settle with option two because it's not too difficult to do a copy from Descript to Antidote and back again if it can be done once and we have no 100 character limit imposed by the script editor. But that depends on if that would work for folks with Grammarly as it seems more people use Grammarly for English than Antidote for English & French...

J D: no, it does not. its bad programing that descript does not have even rudenmentry spell and grammer checking included as at the very least all mac programs do use the in built spell check that works on any text document or even a web browser but descript doesnt utilise it at all let alone integrate third party apllications . its poor design, and totally baffling.

Andrew McMullen: I find this software freaking awesome. What they have done here I wish I would have been available 30 years ago. Hoping the method I propose will be a simple solution for all the spell checking. I many people wanting this, but few (perhaps no) alternatives proposed by the community. Hoping Descript will just allow web editing of the text in text only mode, let us change the words with Grammarly, Antidote and other tools from inside Chrome/Safari, etc. and then save. Descript will do the diff and sync and then put it back in. This will work for all tools and will work for all languages.

Then in a second step, they can start to improve their desktop client and let it offer suggestions dynamically based on context and audio. I think they can do a great job with that. But I think it would be nice to have a bridge and since Grammarly isn't the only corrector and only works with English, I think it would be a mistake to try to just work with that product and exclude the others, especially since we have 22 languages now.

The tool will need to be able to offer suggestions when I click on a word in the language I am editing and a transcription can have multiple languages. So the solutions needs to be a lot more interesting than just "integrate grammarly". It needs to detect the audio language and pick a word from the dictionary for that language and check it for sentence structure in that language.

J D: all they need is a simple toggle switch to put the editor into "edit mode" that pauses/stops "live transcribing" and at that time it will function as any normal text editor consuming minimal resources without any constant communication going on with their servers. The issue is with the editor is the live transcribing competing and consuming resources and bandwidth and trying to upload/download transcribed audio in real time as you type or correct and edit your document. A simple pause transcriber/edit mode would solve the problem and free up the resource usage of the machine and allow Grammarly or whatever /spell checking program to perform its function as they do at any other time. The issue is resource use and live transcribing with no way to turn that off while you run a spell/ grammer checker.

Andrew McMullen: Would it fix the problem if we could extract the transcript and then re-open it? Antidote lets me paste text into their editor and do my analysis and corrections. So I can use the Replace>Transcript... Unfortunately, I like to use lots of markers and inline comments and the import transcript messes all of that up.

This is the reason I was thinking a web-based editor that does the DIFF (compares the actual transcript text) would be the solution.

All of the tools work with Chrome without needing to copy/paste text. So this means no need to ask vendors to integrate with yet another desktop app.

So if Descript offered a way to take the DIFF of what Grammarly or Antidote change, handle the new sync, leaving in place comments and markers, it makes for a nice workflow, doesn't it?

Jeffrey Feldberg: I'm curious if the Grammarly engine supports all languages. I was suggesting Antidote since it seems they support at least French and English. Ideally we can just get an API service from Google that handles everything with Natural Language Processing so that it's not tied to any outside vendor. What might be more interesting here is if Descript offers an API so that we can ask Grammarly and Antidote to read (connect) to our compositions and provide us with alerts or a console with all the errors found. Slightly the opposite but it would let people use the grammar tools they wish to use that are customized for their environment and workflow and not force Descript to do an integration with a company where they don't have control. Thoughts?

J D: Jason it's great to see your passion for Antidote for French and other foreign languages.

Descript started out in the "English" market and I suspect that the majority of the paying customers are working in English. It would be great to see Descript increase customer loyalty by addressing the needs for the majority of the user base and to use another market leader, Grammarly. This is good business. Once Descript has covered off editing the transcript within Descript with Grammarly, perhaps they can consider an API for other programs like Antidote. This approach supports what Descript did by starting out with the English language and branching out.

Regardless of Grammarly or other programs, it's nice to see that this feature suggestion is a popular one. Hopefully the leadership at Descript will take notice.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I'm still wondering about how the integration would look. Personally, on OSx, the built-in spell checker is pretty good. Google Chrome offers an even nicer version. I sort of wonder if it wouldn't be possible to offer the user the ability to open their transcript on the web in a standard form edit mode and then from the web version apply whatever tools we want. For example, Antidote works inside Chrome. I think Grammarly does also and people that don't have either can use the default tools in Safari or Chrome based on whatever privacy mode they choose for their project.

That way, there is no integration at all, it's just a one click - edit my script on the web and a web browser opens up and you have the text with all the underlining etc. You make the corrections, save them and they go back into descript for alignment (if necessary) on the video / audio...

Just as an example, I can hit export>text>copy to clipboard. Paste into Gmail and from gmail i can make all my corrections quickly. They are easy to see, I get suggestions for spelling, etc. The problem is I can't get that export back into descript...

So if Descript could just offer an edit on their existing web version that might be sufficient? Then they run a diff of the text when saved and then when the user next opens the project in Descript Client, the diff is applied and synced.

Antidote makes desktop and iOS integrations already and could probably do this if Descript gives them enough API features to hook up their correction tools to Descript. Since they support multiple languages already, it's well structured and already suited to offline usage. I've never used Grammarly because Antidote does everything I need.