Descript is a collaborative audio/video editor, from the company of the same name in San Francisco, that works like a doc. It includes transcription, a screen recorder, publishing, full multitrack editing, and AI tools.
$12
per month
Handbrake
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
HandBrake is an open-source tool, built by volunteers, for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs. It is available multi-platform (Windows, Mac and Linux) and can be downloaded free.
I've recommended Descript many times as it has really helped me in my video production. In my experience, Descript is well suited for importing multi-cam footage and creating a script from the video / audio. Sharing the project file and having the client highlight key moments or sound bytes of interest. Exporting XML files to be opened up by video editing software and speeding up the process of finding files to creating a rough edit. If you are just using Descript for transcription, I think that is where it is less appropriate since there are many other services that offer this. Where Descript shines is: - adding content that sounds just like the original - being able to build the actual file with an editor - use AI to help clean-up words or add to - and more
It is so well suited for transcoding DVDs to video files. I have never had it not work on any DVD. It can read anything. It does a great job batching multiple videos on a DVD. It does not do a great job in converting one type of video file to another type of video file. The speed is also slower than other options on the market.
UX Performance. Because it's synced to the cloud, there can be some delay or lag in the UX when editing.
Editing Transcriptions. Machine-based transcriptions always need some post-editing. While Descript makes it pretty easy, I still think there is some room for improvement. For instance, I would like to be able to automatically update for all occurrences of a word after fixing it in the transcript.
Automatic importing of YouTube and hosted video files. I often have to download a video from YouTube to be able to import it into Descript. Would be nice to be able to just paste in the URL to the video and have Descript automatically import it.
It's pretty user friendly, has a easy-moderate learning curve. However during updates they do change the features in different panes / sections that make them harder to find. The text editor is near perfect, some of the other tools such as colour, templates, audio etc. are arranged in a slighlty less intuitive manner
Descript is by far superior to the other editing software you can get on Apple computers. It's able to do a lot more and really save us tons of time. Other Adobe apps are great, but take a while to learn. Descript is very user-friendly, making it easy to start from day one with very little training.
Handbrake Video Transcoder does the best job on the market of DVD scanning, transcoding, and batch processing. Other options on the market do not scan DVDs and throughly, reliably, or with the ability to batch all of the video segments. Other software costs a lot more and does not perform as well as Handbrake Video Transcoder with a variety of DVDs.
I can get video completed much more quickly and cheaply
We can produce more video content because of the speed with which we can have a finished product
We can have shorter timelines for example I record on Monday and we publish on Tuesday which wouldn't be otherwise possible with other methods I've used
