Feature Requests

With the focus shifting to video, please consider moving the search results box next to the transcript window. There is so much space between the transcript and the search query window, and then the results box all the way on the right hand side. This is especially true for people working with large, widescreen monitors. Or you know, you can just make all the windows movable and let us setup the screen however we want. But let's just start with moving the results window to the left hand side.

I'm working remote and the playback is horrible, I'm so used to lightning fast internet at home, but it feels like ya'll have not tested the product on slower connections. Even when I'm not playing a video, just trying to edit the transcript, it will spin for 30 seconds or more. I really wish you brought back the local versions for people in this situation.

Hi. The implementation of layers is really clunky in Descript. If I drop video into a project, this sits permanently at the top of the timeline window. If I then put text or graphics over this video, these assets sit below the video timeline. It doesn't make sense to have text and stills sitting below the video in the timeline, but appearing on top of the video in the actual video. Whatever is at the top of the timeline should be the top layer in the video. Audio sequencers or other video editors use multiple tracks, making it easy to cut, drag and re-order clips/assets front (top track on-screen) to back (bottom track on-screen.) I find that once assets have been dropped in to the Descript timeline, it is impossible to re-order them. I have a project with video, text and images, and I can't seem to drag & drop any of these assets to re-order them from front to back. Having a dedicated track for text means you can drop some text in once and re-size it to preference, across the whole video for example (as you would for a channel logo or name). Whereas in Descript you have to drop text into one scene, and then copy paste it into every scene, if you want it to appear throughout the video. It works, but it's clunky. Personally I would have the timeline work more like other sequencers where you can create tracks of different types (video, audio, text) and drop assets into these tracks, cut, re-size, lay out these assets/clips on their individual tracks, and re-order tracks so that whichever track is highest in the sequencer window, this layer appears at the front in the video. I'm a new user, so perhaps I can do all these things in Descript right now, but I am finding it difficult and not at all intuitive. Also, trimming the end of a video scene using the ] tool is really easy and intuitive, but trimming the start of a scene using the [ tool is impossible, because the contents of the clip slide, rather than just being able to drag the start of the clip to, say, the start of the word you want to line it up with. Hope that makes sense. Basically, keep the contents of the clip stationary, and allow the cursor to move the start of the clip left or right to line it up with the transcript. Hope this feedback helps.

Since you are moving towards more AI help in our workflow, in the future, if AI could suggest from all the available libraries the right B-Roll for the scenes we are active in, that would be amazing.

I tried to use Descript to save time by automatically restructuring a long interview. My goal was to take a new, color-corrected version of an interview (with the same words as the original) and have Descript automatically cut and rearrange the transcript to match the order of a previously edited version. However, the AI assistant and script editing tools were not able to reliably: -Identify and match each talking point or sentence between the two versions (even though the words were the same, just in a different order). -Rearrange the new version to match the reference order, without manual intervention. -Remove extra content and ensure only the correct sequence remained. Instead, I spent hours trying to automate this, but the system either left the order unchanged or only partially removed content seemingly at random. This not only defeated the purpose of using Descript for time-saving automation, but it also wasted hours of time and I still have to do the entire thing manually. Request: Please add a feature that allows users to: -Automatically match and reorder transcript content from one version to match the structure/order of a reference transcript (especially when the words are the same, just in a different order). -Confidently automate this process for long interviews or documentary projects, without manual cut-and-paste. This would be a huge time-saver for editors working with multiple versions of the same interview or needing to update a project with the latest clips Thank you!

Title says it all!

If you subscribed years ago and are on a Legacy plan, your price will increase to match what other customers have been paying for over a year. Descript today offers more than it did when Legacy plans were created. - This sucks. We are how you were able to grow. We've been testing and faithful through all the hiccups, and you raise the price!?

The functionality of Descript is potentially great for expert polyglot language learners. Expert language learns parse audio (splitting videos and audio into words, phrases and sentences) and use them to create flashcards in spaced-repetition software (such as Anki). This software optimises learning so you always focus most on the things you don't know. Your tools are almost perfect for this functionality. To be used in this way you want to add a few minutes of spoken audio in a foreign language and parse it into dozens of mp3 files. If you optimised it for this (make it easier to rename chunks on creation) and then bulk mp3 export this could be a game changer

I just downloaded app an hour ago. Look, you are advertising a lot of cool features on your website. On first launch the app shows a windows with big buttons to test them. I tried Eye Contact demo and it was great! With short video tour. However when I open the app now I have a list of projects instead. When I open my project it is just empty screen. I have video text, video preview, "Scene" sidebar and that's all. Where are all these cool features now? Do I need to google for every single feature you have to try them? Try it yourself. Can you open a new project and point your own finger at screen to show me where are all these features? Where are they? I would be totally satisfied having some top panel with big colorful buttons with pictures. One button for each breaking feature. The same panel as Word or Excel have you know, they developed it like 10 years ago. "Add captions", "Add eye contact" etc... At some point I will disable this panel of course. However at first test launch a panel should be definitely there.

Descript insists in renaming the whole project with the title of the composition (if the project has a single composition in it). I've heard this from many of my clients who are confused why this happens. I know it was doing it before but only the FIRST time you renamed it. Now it does it every time. It does it to the point that even if the composition is deleted and a new one is created, the project takes on the name of that new composition. Please make it stop. Not only is this unpredictable, unexpected, unrequested, but some of my clients name their projects with some details such as the date of publication or other things, which get lost as soon as we rename the compositions. At least add an option to turn this behavior off if you don't want to remove it.