This article covers a podcast maker with live recording, audio transcript, transcript-based editing, and real-time collaboration. Podcasts are on the way to become the next big content format after videos. Being an audio focused format, it opens room for developers to experiments with different strategies and methods for podcasts marking, editing, and distributing.
Descript is a unique approach to podcast editing. It’s basically a one-stop solution to record, edit, and mix the podcasts. Either you can add audio files to this tool or record live with multi-track support and speaker recognition. It generates a transcript of the podcast from audio and let you edit the podcast via that transcript. It lets you edit the audio by editing text and drag and drop new clips to add music and sound effects. From the audio timeline, you can fine-tune the audio with cut-copy-paste operations and fading effects. If you miss something or mispronounce, it lets you add corrected pronunciation to the audio by correcting the text. Similarly, you can use this tool to edit videos as well.
This charm of this podcast maker doesn’t stop at transcript-based editing, it also features real-time collaboration where multiple users can add their files, edit together in real-time and add comments for cooperation. The free-tier of Descript gives you up to 3 hours of transcription. If you pass that limit, you can either upload the transcription yourself or go with the paid-tier to automatically transcribe it within the editor.
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Podcast Maker with Live Recording, Transcript-based Editing, Real-time Collaboration
Descript is available as a web app but the real magic lies in the desktop app. The web app lets you organize files and manage projects whereas the desktop app is where it transcribes the audio/video files and lets you edit via text.
To use this podcast maker, visit the website, create a free account and download the desktop app for your PC. Then, install the desktop app and log in with your ID. Upon login, it takes you to the projects where you can get options to create solo and collaborative projects.
Transcribe Postcast from Audio
To edit a podcast via transcript, simply create a project and add the audio files to the project library. You can also record the podcast live with multi-track support. Then right-click an audio file to get the transcript options. This editor offers 3 options for transcript:
- Automatic: This option automatically transcribes the audio to text. It counts against your free transcribe quota which is 3 hours.
- White-Glove: This is a paid option where an actual human from the Descript will transcribe your audio with 99% accuracy.
- Import Transcript: This option lets you upload your own transcript. If you run out of your free transcribe quota, you can transcribe out the editor (using services like Amazon Polly, etc.) and then import the transcript to the editor.
Identify Speakers
Once you have the transcript of your podcast audio file, this editor prompts you to identify the speakers. It plays each audio segment and lets you assign a speaker name to it. This way, you can add speakers to the transcript to make it easy to identify and edit. After that, your podcast is ready to be edited simply by editing the text.
Transcription-based Editing
The Descript editor shows the whole transcript in the box with a timeline of audio at the bottom along with the transcript text and speaker name on top of the audio. The editor has two editing modes:
- Editing Media: This mode is to edit the audio file. You can zoom on the timeline, cut-copy-paste clips, add sounds effects and delete the unwanted part. The transcript changes accordingly as well.
- Correcting Text: This mode is to correct the transcript. It lets you edit the transcript along with an option to generate a pronunciation for the edit so you can easily fix the audio without re-recording the whole segment.
You can add multiple audio clips to the timeline and edit them together.
Real-time Collaboration
The real-time collaboration feature is arguably one of the best collaborative editing methods you could find. You can invite multiple people and all of them can upload their audio file and either generate or upload the transcript as well. Then, all of them can simultaneously edit any segment of the podcast. For a mutual corporation, it has live comments where you can plan the edits and assign roles.
Upon editing the podcast, you can export the results as text, captions, and audio. And, if you go with the premium plans, it lets you export the timeline to popular editing tools including Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, Adobe Audition, and more.
Give this podcast maker a try here.
Wrap Up
Descript is a unique podcast maker which is trying to revolutionize the traditional editing process in order to make it simple and quick. All that with real-time collaboration with others. The transcript-based editing method is quite accurate and has the potential to replace media file editing. But, in case you still need to edit the media file, it lets you do that too; audio and video both. And, the option to get export time to other editors makes it one of the best editors for podcasts.
