Remote Recording
shipped
S
Scott Wyden Kivowitz
I think having this as a feature in Descript rather than having to use Zoom or Skype or anything else would be extremely beneficial. Bascially creating a Zencastr within Descript where we wind up doing the edits anyway. It would be a time saver, and make Descript even more of an all in one solution for podcasting.
To build on this a little more. Zoom and Skype have horrible audio quality. Whereas remote recording services like Zencastr have the ultimate audio experience. That's the benefit of doing this inside of Descript rather than from an external source.
Andrew Mason
Wondering how folks would feel about a remote recording solution that required downloading the Descript app, but no account creation or anything? So the guest would click a link, download the app, and it would open straight into a recording view.
Chad Pennycuff
Andrew Mason: That’s an answered prayer. Everyone worships at the altar of web based remote recording but a small app would be wonderful
William Araujo
Andrew Mason: This would be 🔥
Josh Lewis
Andrew Mason: That sounds awesome.
James Shield
Andrew Mason: Lots of our journalists at The Times are on work laptops, and our IT department doesn't allow us to install apps without them doing it for us. So something web-based would be much more useful. We use Squadcast at the moment.
D
Dave Millman
Andrew Mason: Like it!
K
Khaki
Andrew Mason: That would be fantastic. Even just being able to record into a shared project from two accounts and have the recordings synced would be grand.
Pawan Ram
Hi, am new to descript. Want to do my next episode using this software. Couple of questions:
Does it work on Windows?
Can I use descript only for editing later ?
Andrew Mason
shipped
Our solution to remote recording is computer audio recording: https://blog.descript.com/descript-36-new-features/
P
Paul McGregor
Andrew Mason: It says elsewhere that this only works with Mac. Does this now also work with Windows?
Adam Burns
Paul McGregor: Andrew Mason also very interested in this question
A
Anna Grigoryan
I really need this feature, while recording with Zoom is an option, sometimes internet connection is bad and it takes a toll on the quality of the recording.
This will save me money that I use on Squadcast.
Andrew Mason
Josh Lewis and Theo Miller, what if you:
1) invited your guest to the Descript Project
2) had them record into it directly during your conversation, single track
3) you recorded your track at the same time
4) You conversed over Zoom/Skype or whatever
At the end, you create a Sequence using the two files.
Josh Lewis
Andrew Mason: I think that makes sense. I wasn't very well aware of team functionality, so I'm just reading about it now. It looks like it costs a bit extra, but that's understandable for the level of quality we're after.
But it would be a pretty huge pain to have to have the remote person download Descript, install it and set up an account etc. That's a lot to ask someone to do for an interview. I honestly can't imagine asking a guest (who is freely giving their time to get on Skype or Zoom to talk with me) to go the extra mile to install custom software and set up an account. Only a regular contributor could be expected to do that, and most guests aren't regular contributors.
So the actual solution would require that the guest needs no account, and that they can do this via a web browser. You'd need to have a special unguessable URL that you give to your guest, and they can go there in a (modern!) web browser and record from their computer that way. And the local recording could be captured in-browser and later integrated into the project.
I don't mind spending a bit more of my own time to get a high quality recording. I'm most sensitive about spending more of the guest's time, and needing to do tech help when it doesn't work or they can't figure it out. So the seamlessness of the guest's experience is the most important by far. The seamlessness of mine is secondary.
Theo Miller
Andrew Mason: totally! I still want to use Zoom — wouldn't want to do live video in Descript, that would be overkill. The goal really is to have the highest quality recording with the lowest margin for guest error.
If Descript were to optimize for that, the guest wouldn't even have to press record, right? If the host could shoot the guest a URL via email, or embed it in an invite with the Zoom ID/Pass through a Chrome/Brave extension, there would be zero friction. It's hard enough for a guest to feel at ease, so removing technical hurdles is immensely valuable.
Zencastr can be really janky (audio drift anyone?), but the health checks they run and the consistency with which they provide a zero friction guest experience is second to none so far. I just want to feel confident that I'll have two locally recorded WAV files at the end of the call.
Andrew Mason
Josh Lewis: I get the idea of minimizing guest effort. I'd stick with one of the dedicated services for that - we're not going to be taking that on right now. We built computer audio recording because we found out that most people just record their zoom/skype sessions, but there's definitely still a place for the lossless services.
Josh Lewis
Andrew Mason: Many thanks to you and your whole team for the hard work they're doing on all of this!
Tim Courtney
Andrew Mason: I want to give a quick +1 to Josh's request about a frictionless guest experience that results in two locally recorded WAV files.
I'd love it if I could start a new Descript project, send the guest a remote recording link, and get two locally recorded WAV files. When it's all done, Descript would ingest the guest's WAV file into the project.
Given our current volume, we can use a dedicated service for now. In the coming months I see where this could become more of a challenge for us.
Thanks!
Andrew Mason
in development
We now support remote recording via computer audio recording on the Mac. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Josh Lewis
Andrew Mason: This is a great step in the right direction. I was so delighted to see it! Thank you, thank you, thank you! 👏
To consider this request fully fulfilled, I think Descript ultimately needs the ability to record and retrieve what your video here [https://blog.descript.com/descript-36-new-features/] calls "lossless recordings". That would be the definitive fulfillment of this request.
Theo Miller
Andrew Mason: This is great! I agree with Josh though, I can't fully switch over to Descript (the dream!) until the audio is recorded locally on the remote guest's computer and progressively uploaded to the cloud. The tinny sound of VoIP haunts our dreams 👻
Josh Lewis
This would be so exciting! I want this feature more than anything else.
D
Dave Millman
Squadcast.fm has an elegant solution to this problem, but doing it inside of Descript makes so much more sense. The Remote Interview help article contains workarounds, thank you, but Loopback is not a solution. In my experience, it creates as many problems as it solves (although some may be caused by interactions between Zoom and OSX and Loopback and other components).
The point is, recording a high-quality audio file locally at both locations, then merging those into Descript, would dramatically broaden Descript's prospect base. Loopback is simply incompatible with the elegance of Descript. And Total Recorder? No updates since 2015.
(repeat of a request previously sent to Andrew Mason)
Jason Cabassi
I second this one! This would make all the difference for me. It would make Descript my indispensable one-stop shop.
Load More
→