Shorten word gaps should analyze audio to prevent cutting off words
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Jonathan Stern
When I use AI to shorten word gaps, it goes overboard. It truncates laughter, crosstalk and, often, actual dialogue that, for some reason, Descript didn't transcribe (usually the last word or two of someone speaking). Then I have to play back the entire composition and manually re-extend the shortenings that cut off too early. At the end of it, I don't save any time with this tool. This tool should be changed to just be "shorten gaps" rather than "shorten WORD gaps."
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Jonathan Stern
That workaround will not solve it. The problem is that we want to shorten “gaps,” not “word gaps.” If people are laughing, for example, those aren’t words. However, they are sounds that we want to retain. You need to rebuild this tool from the ground up to simply shorten audio gaps, whether that audio is a word or not. And thus maintain sounds that are NOT words. This is my single biggest complaint about Descript.
Gabe Michalski
Hiya folks! I am going to flag this internally, but I want to help explain the root cause.
Shorten word gaps uses the transcript + "word alignment" to determine the length of a word. Our default transcription service is the most accurate in terms of capturing the exact words and variations of like-sounding-words etc.
We have some work to do on "word alignment" which is the system that tells all the other tools what time-box each word occupies within the script. If this system marks the end of a word incorrectly, even by a very small margin, it can cause this issue.
At the moment the best workaround is to try re-transcribing the file. In some cases, changing transcription provider to Rev v2 (our most time-tested model) is the best option.
As I mentioned, I will flag this as an ongoing issue.
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Jonathan Stern
Also, retranscribing uses up our monthly transcription minutes.
Sean Ferres
dude holy SHIT this is driving me crazy. I literally save almost zero time with Descript and spend 1 to 2 hours cleaning up its cuts because it's cutting out words instead of removing word gaps by the actual audio signal. Moving to timebolt for this reason
Gabe Michalski
Sean Ferres: Looks like you reported this to support - I'll flag it internally as well to our product team since we don't have an immediate to offer beyond re-transcribing the file to try to improve word alingment.
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Rachel Gristock
Logged in to complain about the very same thing!
Autopilot
Merged in a post:
Shorten gaps in Ai tools issue
yesh rice
shorten gaps feature is cutting off part of the beginning word of every sentence. Please fix
Remy Anders
Yes! Any time I delete a pause, it cuts off half of the last spoken audio and I have to manually fix it. There's a whole thread of people complaining about this in the "Descript Users" facebook group. Don't know why this isn't voted at the top of everyone's list.
Autopilot
Merged in a post:
when I delete silences it cuts off the end of the last word.
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James Christensen
When I delete a pause, it usually cuts off the end of the last word, and I have to go back an edit it manually.
Autopilot
Merged in a post:
when I delete silences it cuts off the end of the last word.
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James Christensen
When I delete a pause, it usually cuts off the end of the last word, and I have to go back an edit it manually.
Autopilot
Merged in a post:
Shortening Word Gaps tool is too aggressive
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Jonathan Stern
When I use AI to shorten word gaps, it goes overboard. It truncates laughter, crosstalk and, often, actual dialogue that, for some reason, Descript didn't transcribe (usually the last word or two of someone speaking). Then I have to play back the entire composition and manually re-extend the shortenings that cut off too early. At the end of it, I don't save any time with this tool. This tool should be changed to just be "shorten gaps" rather than "shorten WORD gaps."