Descript Live Q&A (Powerful Tips!) - July 5, 2024 livestream

Replay from July 5, 2024's live stream:

Ross [00:00:00]:
Live. I thought I would start with just answering a couple commonly asked questions that I've gotten throughout the week here on this YouTube channel. And I'm just gonna do that to full time, so please feel free to drop your questions in the chat. I see we already got a couple of viewers joining on different channels. And so yeah. As always, open line open line Friday, drop your questions in the chat and I'll respond to those. But until I get questions, I'm gonna run through some of these commonly asked or some of them are commonly asked, some of them I got for the first time this week. But let's start with, can Descript be used for podcast editing? So, yes, absolutely.

Ross [00:00:41]:
I show video 99% of the time on this channel, but it's great for podcast editing. In fact, that's Descripts. That's where Descript shines is podcast editing. And to this project I have pulled up right now is a video project, but I can convert it to audio only. And when the questioner is asking, can you make podcasts? I'm assuming they're talking about just audio without the visual component. And if that's the case, then what you can do is switch to set composition to audio only. And when you click on that, boom, the visual part goes away, the canvas. And everything else works pretty much the same.

Ross [00:01:24]:
The big difference is if you're in audio only, there's no scenes. So it's just you just have the, the script layer and then you have you still have different layers. So you can add sound effects, you can add music, but you just can't add images or video. And there's no scenes. So it's just working with 1 continuous thing. And for me coming from doing 99% of my editing and video, that's that gets a little confusing. I'm like, where's my scenes? How am I supposed to figure out where to put this this other layer here? But, yeah. So to answer your question, yes.

Ross [00:02:00]:
Descript can be used for podcast editing. And my argument is it's the best for that. Descript, I'll be straightforward in saying Descript is not the best at a lot of things, but for spoken word stuff, Descript is great. Okay. How does Descript handle multitrack editing? So okay. Multitrack editing, you need to do something called a sequence. You have to add a sequence which allows you to stack multiple layers, multiple tracks. And if you bring in a interview from something like SquadCast, it'll automatically do this.

Ross [00:02:46]:
So if you have, let's say, just for simplicity, 2 guests, 2 people talking When you hit the edit in the script button from SquadCast, it'll automatically bring it in as 2 different tracks. And each of those tracks will have a visual component and an audio component, thus being a video. And the sequence is I don't have a way to show it right now and without building 1. But the other way to get to a sequence is in your project files. And let me turn on my screen cursor thing here so you can see this a little better. There we go. So project files over here on the right. And when you open that up, this is where all of your projects that all of your files that compose your project live.

Ross [00:03:36]:
If you click on these 3 dots, you can do this create sequence. And again, this will happen automatically if you're bringing it in from something like SquadCast. But to start throwing from scratch, this is how you do it. And so you'd have track 1 here and then you have track 2, track 3, etcetera, as many tracks as you want. And what this does, what a sequence is, is like a container of these tracks. So if I were to have 3 different tracks, I got 3 different speakers going. I can match them all up so they're all synced. All their voices are in time and they're they're responding in the right order.

Ross [00:04:15]:
When I go to edit in my timeline, it'll just appear as 1 track. And if I make a cut, it'll cut all 3 of the tracks inside of that sequence proportionally so that they stay in sync. Alternatively, if you didn't use a sequence and you had those as 3 separate layers in your timeline, you'd have to cut every single layer together and then you'd have to make sure that they're all cut at the same places. Otherwise, the whole thing's going to get out of sync. So, yeah, to answer your question, that's how Descript handles multitrack editing. And from inside of your sequence, you can do things like mute a track, you could, delete a certain section of a track. If there's crosstalk, for example, if some people are talking over each other, then you can cut out the spots where that's happening and and clean it up in that way. So, yeah, multi track editing sequence editing is an essential skill if you're recording with more than 1 person on more than 1 track.

Ross [00:05:23]:
Somebody asked, what is Overdub and how does it work in Descript? So overdub is kind of a deprecated out of date term. I think they still let me just write something in here. It's now called AI speaker, but there's still a place where it says overdub. So let me let me use, Underlord actually for this. I'm gonna I clicked on under Underlord. I'm gonna say write a script starting point. Write a script about overdub in the script. It doesn't matter what it's about because I'm just gonna demonstrate this.

Ross [00:06:10]:
And it generated my script. And for some Okay. There it is. Add to script. There it is. So now, if I click on If I highlight some words, I click on this menu above it that says replace. You can see right here, and it's not an option right now, it's grayed out, but there's overdub. So they still use the word overdub.

Ross [00:06:33]:
And what overdub is is it'll take the it'll allow you to to input text and then convert it to speech, spoken speech. So and it uses a voice that you've trained or 1 of Descript's stock voices. And if I were to add a speaker, this ad speaker is always above every paragraph in Descript. If I click on it, these AI speakers here are the ones that I've trained. So I have Ross, Ross 2.0. And then there's down here browse stock speakers and these are the ones that ship with Descript. They're just generic like, British accent. Some of them, they say what they are.

Ross [00:07:17]:
It's a British announcer, adult, feminine, and it sounds like this. Life is like a camera. Just focus on what's important. Capture the good times. Develop from the neck. Hopefully, you can hear that through the live stream. But it's just a generic built in 1. And so you could apply those, those are the AI speakers.

Ross [00:07:38]:
But the important thing is if you need to correct something, then you can go to overdub, and then it'll it'll allow you to, change what's being said basically using the voice that you've labeled it as. So that should answer your question. That's what overdub is and that's how it works in Descript. The next question is the opposite of the first question. Is Descript suitable for video editing? Yes, it is. So it's good that I'm already in an audio only project because if I go to the, composition name or the project name here at the top, Once again, where before it said set composition to audio, I can do set composition to video, and I'll return to video. And even if I already had something in here, for example, if I had a stock video in here, and I'm just I just clicked on it to add it. I went to media, clicked on the first thing that was in that list, and that's gonna add it to my project.

Ross [00:08:39]:
Oh, and I added it to my to what I had selected which was just those 3 words. I'll talk about that in a moment. So it's now a video. It's got video in it. If I change it back to audio the same way, then it it gets rid of the video. But when I bring it back again, the video is still there. So all that data of the the video part of it is still there in the background. So, yeah, I just point that out that it's it's instant to convert between the 2.

Ross [00:09:10]:
And yeah, it's it doesn't matter. It also doesn't matter because if you go to publish, even though this is a video, I can choose to export it as an audio file by clicking on that audio tab. And then I could choose to export it as dot wav.mp3.m4a, etcetera. And so functionally, when I export as 1 of those, it's an audio only file. So just multiple different ways to get to the same result. Next question. Does descript offer collaborative features? Yes, it does. So, there's several ways to collaborate in a Descript project.

Ross [00:09:53]:
The I'm trying to think how to tackle this. The simplest is if you share it as a web link. So this thing right here under the publish button, and then there's this thing that says web link, and then you hit publish. What that does once you've published it to a web link is it generates a web link. And if you click on this globe right here, it opens another page, which is this video obviously. And it's gonna take a little bit to render, shouldn't take too long. This is actually the fastest way to process your videos, but you can see that it's got the transcript down here, and then it's just a normal you can play, pause, etcetera. So you could share this with a client if you're doing professional editing or doing marketing for somebody.

Ross [00:10:46]:
You could. However, this makes sense. If you have editors you're working with, then you could you could communicate with them here. And the way you do that is by highlighting some words. And in this little comment bubble pops up and you can click on that and then you can see it's timestamps. So it says 20 seconds. And then you could say, this is my comment. Oops.

Ross [00:11:10]:
You know, they actually click that button. And then, there's your time there's your your comment. And you could respond to that comment or if it's your client leaving you feedback, for example, on an edit, they're saying cut this scene or something like that. Then you could once you've done it, you could just hit that little that little check mark to mark it done. And you can set up your notifications so that you get an email every time a comment is left. And there's all sorts of settings associated with that. But that is this is the most user friendly way to communicate. Now the way to edit together, like, let's say you're working with a team of editors, it's you and some VAs that you hired or whatever doesn't whatever your situation is, then the easiest way is within a project to click on this project access button.

Ross [00:12:01]:
And I actually did a video about this. I think it was yesterday about how to add somebody here which is really simple. All you do is just enter their email address, that's the email address for their Descript account. And then you assign them a permission level, so either they can edit or they can leave comments, and that's it. Those are the those are the 2 options. Then you click invite to project, it sends them an email with a link to then join your project. And then from there, they can edit it. And this doesn't generate an editor seat.

Ross [00:12:34]:
An editor seat is when you're actually paying another It's a if seat is another membership. So you don't have to to pay when you do this option through the project access. And then but there are there are other limitations. If they're on a free plan, they won't be able to access certain features and and things like that. But to to get full access, you'd have to have your editors on their own editor seats, which I'll talk about in a moment. And then, you can set the access level. So project access required means you have to explicitly send them the email invite using this thing above. Anyone with the link can view means you could post this on publicly and anyone could join.

Ross [00:13:21]:
Anyone with the link can they're sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Anyone with the link. So if the link is available, they could join, they could view it. This other 1 is anyone can comment, and then you could copy that link, and then you could send it out to a group or whatever it is that you wanna do with it. So that's project access. The other way would be to go into your settings and add someone here.

Ross [00:13:47]:
This would add a member. So this is different than adding a editor to an individual project. This will add somebody to the entire drive. They'd be able to see all my folders, all of my projects, everything that's inside of this drive. And then you can invite them by email once again, and of course, that's their Descript account email. And here's the thing about inviting someone to a drive is you have to pay for an editor seat for them, which will be the same editor's seat that or the same level of access that you have. So if you're on the hobbyist plan, which is until a week ago was the creator plan. If you're on the hobbyist plan, it'll be $144 a year.

Ross [00:14:29]:
If you're on the what's now called the creator plan, it'll be $288 a year. And then you can you can either give them editor access, which would require buying a seat, or you can do basic access, which is like a free level editor. And so they're basically just all the limitations of being on a free descript account. Like, you are very limited on the stock media, 1 hour of transcription a month, and it's it's very limited in what you can do with it. Okay. So hopefully that makes sense. I know it's it's confusing the delineation between like project access and, and drive access. But and there's a lot of gray area like what happens when a team member leaves, who gets access to who who controls the account and there's all these different gray areas that that happen, but that's the high level.

Ross [00:15:22]:
Okay. Let's see what's next in the chat. And please feel free to keep the the questions coming, drop them in the chat as we go. Otherwise, I'll just keep reading off of these ones that have that have built up over the last week. Okay. This question goes in line with what I was just talking about. How much does the script cost? And this is timely for another reason because this all just changed on July 2nd, 3 days ago. There's still well, there's 4 plans now.

Ross [00:15:52]:
So there's the free plan, which is very limited and it's gotten more limited. There's the hobbyist plan which until 3 days ago was called the creator plan. There's the creator plan which until 3 days ago is called the pro plan. And then there's a new 1 called business. And these are all displaying the annual rate. So $12, $24 $40 respectively. And you can toggle over to monthly. And these have gone up actually from what they used to be.

Ross [00:16:24]:
193550 respectively. And so that's a big difference. That's, yeah. That's gonna makes it in much more enticing to get the the annual plan which is of course what they want. So the biggest difference now is that there's limitations on the AI use. If you're on the hobbyist plan, only get 20 uses per month of the AI suite which is the filler word removal, studio sound, social posts, create clips, all this stuff in the Underlord tab. You you get unlimited with the creator in the business plan. And then there's also limitations on the AI speech, 30 minutes on hobbyist, a 120 minutes on creator, and 300 minutes on the business plan.

Ross [00:17:16]:
And that's the I talked about this when I answered the overdub question, but the AI speech is when you type in text and then convert that to speech using the using the AI system. So, yeah. And then there's also limitations. You can only export at 1080p on the hobbyist plan, 720p on the free plan as well as there's watermarks on the free plan, 4 k and above on or 4 k on creator and above. And then the big 1, and I I did a video about this as well a couple days ago. So if that's of interest, you can go watch that whole thing. But the big thing for me is, well, remote remote recording. If you're gonna be doing a lot of squad cast calls, you only get 10 hours on hobbyist, 30 hours on creator and 40 on business.

Ross [00:18:11]:
But the big limitation for a lot of people I think is the cloud storage. So you get a 100 gigabytes on hobbyist, you get 1 terabyte on creator, and you get 5 terabytes on business. So that's a pretty big incentive if you're doing a lot of video. That's a significant amount of cloud storage, and that is probably the biggest differentiator between these 2. So Oh, and there's also a limitation on file size. I've I've hit this before so actually that would be a a good reason to bump up to business. If you're recording at 4 k, and you have just massive massive file size that that's pretty important. Okay.

Ross [00:18:59]:
So that's pricing. Let me know if you have any more questions about that. I can go into it. And let's see here what else is on the list. What are the main advantages of using Descript over traditional editing software? So yeah, this is a interesting question. By traditional editing software, I'm assuming you're talking about simple stuff like Imovie as well as like Premiere Pro and the big innovation of Descript, I don't know if they were the pioneer of this or they're at least the whole system is focused around it is the transcript. Talking about the words right here that automatically get put on the page when you add a file. And they're trying to make it as easy as editing a word doc where you can just select things, delete it, change it while it's highlighted, that kind of stuff.

Ross [00:19:58]:
So the main advantage of using Descript over another software quite simply is is that editing it from the transcript. Before with some things like Audacity, I I use Audacity back in the day, you would have to use the sound waves to like identify an or to figure out where to make a cut. And that's hard. That's a lot of work. It requires a lot of backing up a couple of seconds, playing it, finding the sound waves, cutting it. It's it's time intensive. So to be able to just say, like, okay. I wanna get rid this whole first paragraph, highlight it, boom, delete, it's gone.

Ross [00:20:41]:
It's it's the best out there for that. Let me know if you have any more specific questions or use cases about that, or maybe what editing software you're coming from, and I can tell you what makes it different. Let's see what else is in the questions. Talked about multitrack editing, and please anyone else feel free to drop more questions in the chat. Otherwise, I'm gonna keep going off of this list. How does Descript transcription feature work? So I don't know the technical details of how it works, but I can tell you the process of how it works, which is that when you add a file to descript, for example, you drag and drop a file in or you go into project files, which again is where all of the files that make up your project will live. You can drag and drop in here or you can do an upload. You can do a browse through your computer.

Ross [00:21:46]:
As soon as you add that file, a dialog box will pop up that says, do you wanna transcribe this? And and you can turn that off in your settings where it'll automatically do it. But by default, it'll ask you And then you can identify speakers and maybe I'll just do it. It'll be easier to demonstrate. Let's do, these ones are things that didn't make the cut. They didn't if the recordings that failed. So this is what it looks like. You, as soon as I drag and drop that video into this project, this transcribing box popped up, says your transcript will be ready in a few minutes, the name of the file, and then you can identify the number of speakers. It's just me, so I'd leave it at 1.

Ross [00:22:29]:
But if you had like multiple speakers, that's where you could put that in. And then you can choose the name of the speaker. So if you saw earlier when I was talking about AI speakers, this is how you do the text to speech. And so it's always advantageous to label the speaker in case you're going to use that feature. But not only that, it helps with organization. You can see it'll label different speakers as different colored sound waves. So you could have a green sound wave and a purple sound wave and helps you keep track of who's talking and if you have to cut out any crosstalk, things like that. So yeah.

Ross [00:23:07]:
So that's where you label your speaker. You can set the language. This is in English and you can say always ask before detecting speakers or you could turn that off if you wanted and then you hit done. And it it was super short that that's the thing right there. That's the transcription. It's just a couple of sentences. But that's how it looks, that's how it works, and hopefully, that answers your question. The next thing is That's it actually.

Ross [00:23:37]:
I went through the whole list. So let me know if you have any questions. Drop them in the chat, and we'll we'll go from there. And otherwise, I need more ideas of what to talk about. Let's see. I ran a couple of polls this week asking people the people were saying they want to see more of the quick tips, which I've been doing just like 1 minute to 2 minute walk throughs of a very specific feature. And, oh, I thought of 1 question I got this week. Somebody asked, how do you save your project in Descript? And the answer is you don't.

Ross [00:24:20]:
There's no save button. It's not like a traditional software in that sense. It's cloud based. So everything's backing up to the cloud constantly. And if you make a change, you see this little this little dot at the top. If I hover over it, hang on. So that thing that says synced and it tells me how long ago it synced. That's telling me that all the changes I made to this project have been backed up to Descripts cloud.

Ross [00:24:48]:
And if I make a change, like, let me just delete a word. It's not enough. But if it's processing something like you're applying an effect, it you'll see it processing and then that check will appear as soon as it's successfully backed up. And as long as you're connected to the Internet, you don't have to worry about things getting lost. So question in the chat is what does it look like when you import 1 video with 2 or 3 speakers? So good question. Let me think if I have any examples I could pull in. Let me take a look at my files here. I don't have any files here.

Ross [00:25:39]:
So there's a I'll talk through it. There's a another tool called the text speakers, and I can kinda show it. It's grayed out. If you click on the name of the file, if it doesn't automatically do this, this is how you can manually prompt it. You click on these 3 dots, and then click on detect speakers, and that'll take you through the detect speaker wizard for lack of a better word. And the it'll play a clip from each unique voice that it detects. And sometimes it fails. It'll detect the same person as different different speakers but it's in fact the same person.

Ross [00:26:23]:
But usually, it does a pretty good job. And then right next right under where it plays that clip of that person, you label them and then you click save and it goes to the next 1. It automatically goes through all the unique speakers that it found in that video file. Hopefully, that helps. How do you use markers in your video? So good question. Very good question. Markers are added with the pound sign, the hashtag signed. So shift 3 on AUS.

Ross [00:26:57]:
Keyboard and you can see this thing that just popped up says marker. And if you start typing, I could call this it's already called marker. So Hammond add another 1 shift 3. I'm gonna call this sample 1. As soon as I added a marker, first of all, you can see it's it's bold, it looks a little different. It's got this thing next to it so you could move it around, change the position of it. It's also right here. So that's, that's a link where if I click on it, notice some, let me scroll to the very bottom and I click on that, it scrolls me to that point in the video.

Ross [00:27:32]:
And it also added this tab. This tab didn't exist until I added a marker. So now there's 1 there. And then there's there's always a default 1 at 0, which will be the start of your or the name of your project. And the other big thing about markers and to answer your question, if I use markers in my workflow, yes, they're I love markers. They're super useful. And on a very short thing like this is only a minute and a half. They don't make much sense.

Ross [00:28:04]:
But on like a hour long, 2 hour long podcast, they're essential to be able to just like quickly go to a certain point in the video. But the other thing that I use markers for is because I'm making videos for YouTube all the time. If you go to publish and you go to publish to YouTube, check this out. That marker is a timestamp, and that automatically becomes a chapter inside of YouTube. And 1 step beyond that, if you're to underlord, you can do this thing that says add chapters and says divide into chapters and add markers. You can pop in a number there like 2 or you can even write auto and it'll decide how many markers you hit submit. And it created 2 markers. I add the script.

Ross [00:28:51]:
There's 1, and there's the other 1. And you can see they're over here, they're over here, And they'll be in my YouTube description. So, yeah, markers are awesome. Definitely use them. Okay. Yes. So the question in the chat, how do you edit a video with 2 or more speakers? So at the beginning of this live stream, I assume you probably weren't here. I talked about this.

Ross [00:29:23]:
Sequences are like containers with all the different layers. So it's all on 1 layer and not different layers. Yeah. So inside of the sequence is multiple layers and I'll show I actually made 1 in this project file. It's creates a folder called sequences. And then here's the sequence that I created. There's nothing in it because I was just demoing it. But if I hit edit sequence, there's track 1, track 2, track 3.

Ross [00:29:53]:
So if you had different people in your interview, they all had separate mics, separate cameras. This is how you could keep everything in sync. And so you you just sync it up in here inside of the sequence view. Once they're all in sync, you hit done and then you would insert it into your script and then it just becomes your it's just your script layer. And whenever you make a cut to that sequence, it'll cut all the tracks inside of it proportionally to keep everything in sync. So you have to you have to use them if you're gonna be editing, multi track stuff. And the question in the chat, how do you take a 2 person interview in which you've been using multi cam feature to switch between 2 speakers in 1 template to the active speaker on a new template. How do you do that efficiently? Let me make sure I'm understanding the question which you're using all the computers.

Ross [00:30:57]:
Okay. If I'm understanding right, you're asking about having 2 different templates based into a 100 scenes that I'm currently going on. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And then the next part of the question is currently it breaks it out into like a 100 scenes that I'm currently going 1 by 1 to apply. So the that's what the multi speaker does is it'll automatically break it up to every time that 1 of the tracks is detected, 1 of the speakers is detected, it'll make that person's video full screen, thus the active speaker. And the thing that I do for 2 person interviews is I'll do the multi cam.

Ross [00:31:47]:
And, let me think if I can show this. I wanna show I have a I have 1 that I can show. This is not a good sample. So I'll come back to that. I don't wanna waste too much time looking for it on this live stream, but basically you have the the full full scene views and you can make 1 that is like essentially your template for where you have 2 people. And I don't know if this is quite answering your question, but it should help with, I think what you're looking to do. So let's say that these are 2 speakers. So let's say that speaker a and speaker b.

Ross [00:33:05]:
And importing video. Just take a moment here. Basically, what we're gonna do is right click on the scene. So create essentially like a scene how you want it to look. So if I take this 1, make her like over here, I have my other Still importing. Like let's say this becomes my sort of template within my project for how I want the the 2 speakers to look. I can copy this scene. And let me shrink this down.

Ross [00:33:47]:
So they look like this. I can hit copy layout right here. Right click copy layout. I can go to another scene and say paste layout and it paste that exact thing and I can get rid of that background. It paste the exact layout from the 1 that I copied without pasting the content. It's just the the layout of those 2 speakers cameras. It's not a not a perfect example but hopefully that kind of make sense. I think what you're looking for is the copy layout feature and templates.

Ross [00:34:22]:
If you you could also apply templates to an entire set of layers if you wanted. I tried creating a sequence, but I couldn't edit the sequence when I inserted into the video. I had 7 voices talking at the same time when I played the video. So the for editing the sequence, it's Let me just insert the 1 that I made. If I go to project sequence, insert into script. Oh, and there's It's just empty. So let me actually add something here. Say add media.

Ross [00:35:04]:
These are I'm totally making up examples with ad hoc stuff here. This isn't like proper because it's not, there's nothing to line up here, but let me just add any track. So now I got 2 tracks And inside of my sequence, if you're getting 7 voices talking at once, they're not in sync. So I'm just gonna give this a moment to load so we can see the sound waves, but you're gonna need to get all of them in sync. And again, that was going to the edit edit, so I got distracted by the chat, edit the sequence, and then moving them so the sound waves so everything's proportional or everything's in sync to how the actual interview is conducted. And let me just close this, see if I can get the sound waves in sequence. There they are. So let's pretend that this isn't the same track and speaker a, let's call it speaker a and speaker b.

Ross [00:36:11]:
Let's say that they're like speaker a is asking a question, speaker b responds. You do you line them up proportional to each other so that they're in sync. And then once that's set, then then that's then you're set. You can hit done and then it'll all be in sync in that container. That sequence is done. Unless you need to make further changes, which to do that, you can right click on it and then hit, where that's my Oh, no, that's not my sequence. Okay. So yeah.

Ross [00:36:48]:
So the edit sequence question in the chat is the edit sequence couldn't find it. Right here in your project files, there's a sequence folder that gets created. And then any sequences that you've made will be under it, and you can hit this 3 dots, hit edit sequence. Yeah. So there's that. And then the other way I'm gonna show you is let's say this is already in my script. So this is my sequence right here. I can right click on it and then edit sequence, just like you said.

Ross [00:37:19]:
And then that pulls up the sequence screen. Yeah. So, and then the other question in the chat is back to the copy and paste layout. Go through each of the 100 slides and 1 by 1 copy paste layout depending on if it's 1 person talking versus both. So, yes, for what I showed you, like, the thing that's showing both of them, that would be how you do, like, the side by side view. There's let me think about this. There there would be a way to apply it to all of the active speakers. But let me think about this.

Ross [00:38:14]:
If I apply You've stumped me. I don't know. I'm I'm blanking right now. Public public, public math. There is a way, there is a way where you can apply it to the active the multi cam feature where it'll apply that template. And then, that's probably what you're looking for is from the start to have it all applied throughout the whole video. It's a good question. I'll make a I'll make a video about that, later when I'm not remembering how to do it on the spot.

Ross [00:39:17]:
Anything else related to that? And you could apply a template. So so for example, you could apply something from the gallery like, let's say, maybe this will jog my memory when I do it. Like, let's say I apply this. And supplying layout. And by the way, that was seen and then choose template. And then you just pick something from the gallery. The gallery is all of these scripts built in stuff, all of their built in templates. And then, you could tweak it from here.

Ross [00:40:02]:
You could change what they have, and then let me change the order of these. So they're not hidden. Where's the other 1? There she is. And then, you copy and paste this view. So this is not even a sequence, so that this template didn't work correctly, but you could, you could do a multi cam if it was a sequence, you could do captions. But the same principle here. You do copy layout and then just to demonstrate it, you could do paste layout and then you can see it put in that background and put in the the text layer. It put in the, rectangle and made for any purposes in such a phone speaker versus 2.

Ross [00:41:04]:
Yeah. So question in the chat is they have custom templates made for branding purposes for 1 speaker versus 2. So so 1 person is on the video at all time. You know what I'm understanding? What you could do, I don't it would depend how you have it set up. Here's what's tricky about templates is the way that I I teach this is there's 2 types of templates. There's templates that affect the size and position of layouts. So if I click on my scene 1, I go to the scene and I click on like, for example, 1 of these layers. Some of the templates will affect the size and position.

Ross [00:41:55]:
So like the x and y coordinates and the height and width. Some templates add layers and some templates do both. So this template added this rectangle layer, this title layer, this template layer, etcetera. So if your template, your custom template is captions, then the easiest way to make that fill the whole project. And I can just demonstrate this. Like, let's say I add templates or add captions to scene 2. So I go to my scene, I choose a template, I choose this 1 that's called captions. It's applying layout.

Ross [00:42:36]:
There's this captions layer, but it's only in scene 2. So what I could do is just simply drag that that caption layer to fill the whole project. So I could just click on it and drag it to extend it to the end of the project. Like so. So that's, that's the easiest way if that's what your templates are. But if they're size and position templates, that gets a little bit more complicated. And by the way, this is like people always if I'm in a tutoring call and I teach somebody this, they're like, that made the whole thing worth it. Thank you.

Ross [00:43:20]:
Zooming in on the timeline like I just did is holding command on a Mac and control on a Windows and then scrolling up and down with your mouse. So that all zoom in and out on your timeline. And then shift and scrolling up and down will scroll left and right on your timeline. So that's navigational. And then somebody said, I tried using a template. Templates are confusing. Yes, they are. There's a lot of nuance to them and the every situation is different.

Ross [00:43:56]:
But and then the the question is what is a placeholder? So this placeholder layer that appeared right here, the reason that's there is this template was looking for a sequence, which we've talked about. Sequences are a container of multiple layers, but there's no sequence here. So it creates a placeholder for the layer that it can't find. The 2 layers that it can't find. There's placeholder 1, placeholder 2. And it's nothing. It's like a empty rectangle. Like you see, I have it selected right now on my canvas.

Ross [00:44:30]:
There's nothing there. It's literally like it sounds like a placeholder. If I go to layer, there's nothing. There's no color. There's nothing. So that's why it's it's a it's a weird thing of templates. If if you're trying to apply a template to a layer that isn't completely compatible with it. Question in the chat is also how do you move a track or caption or title from 1 layer to another to reduce the 100 layers in my project? Track or caption or title from 1 layer to another.

Ross [00:45:10]:
Okay. So I think you're asking about layer order which if it's if it's a track and audio track then it doesn't really matter except visually. But with the other things, it does matter because it'll affect the order that you see it in. So for example, this Let's do let's do right here. So this podcast are on the left is getting covered up by these pill looking things, these shapes. So to change the layer order and it'll go, it goes in the order from top to bottom. So top is gonna be the most visible. So this caption layer being at the top, other than this placeholder, I'm gonna delete that placeholder.

Ross [00:45:59]:
My caption layer is gonna be in front of everything else. It's gonna be the most visible. If I want to change that, I can right click on it, and I can go to layer order. And I can say bring to front, which it already is. So that wouldn't do anything. Bring forward would bring it 1 layer at a time forward. But again, it's already in the front. Send backward, we'll move it backward 1 layer at a time.

Ross [00:46:22]:
So if I click on that, it's now behind this thing called image 11 which is I think that thing right there. But it's they're not overlapping anyways so nothing changed as far as we're concerned. But if I click on it again and I could say layer order, send to back, we'll send it all the way to the back. It'll be the behind everything. So notice it's disappeared, but if I go to my my, timeline, it's now at the very bottom. And, yeah. That's layer order. I think, probably understand that.

Ross [00:46:56]:
If you go to layer, you can go hit this back arrow, and then you have all your layers right here. So I could drag the captions up as well, and now my captions are back on top. And there's 1 other thing I was gonna point out with captions. You can lock it right there so that now I can't even select it at all. It's like it's stuck in place. Is there something else? Yeah. So I think it does that answer your question? Is that what you're looking forward? Like layer order, I think was the the feature you're you're asking about. Oh, I remember what I was gonna say.

Ross [00:47:37]:
The other part with layers is this thing below it, and this is new as of the the latest version of Descript. But when you make a change, be careful to note whether you have current scene selected or all scenes. Because if I only have current scene selected and this layer spans multiple scenes, only the layer order in this scene is gonna be affected, which I may or may not want. If I wanted to affect the whole video, I can change it to all scenes, and then it'll it'll change it in all scenes. Yeah, that's that's scene order 101. Okay. In the chat, I was fighting layer order a lot, but I have some layers. I didn't notice where they were in the charts at the bottom.

Ross [00:48:21]:
Yeah. And, and to answer your other question about the placeholder, yes, you can delete it. Those are just, they're nothing. So if you can delete it and it won't affect anything else. If you have a bunch of layers well, first of all, are they necessary? Because I usually this is, like, way more layers than I normally even have unless it's, like, a really complicated animation or something that I've created. I usually only have, like, 3 or 4 layers at any given point. Of course, every project can be different depending on the complexity of it. But Yeah.

Ross [00:48:58]:
So maybe you have like some placeholders or things in there that that shouldn't be there. If that's the case, like with this captions, this is actually a perfect example. So captions should are pretty much always gonna be in front of everything because you wanna be able to see them. So let's say in this situation with my captions on top, I locked it. So now that's not gonna be affected by anything else. And I can kinda just not worry about that that layer. So for things like that, I would suggest deleting all the unnecessary layers and then locking the ones that aren't gonna be moving or that are just getting in your way. And then between those 2 things that should help you get organized with sorting through your layers.

Ross [00:49:48]:
Question in the chat. My latest video, I had 1 main video with me talking, then I imported 7 videos of the person I was interviewing for 7 responses from them. Oh, okay. So that was why you had all the the sequence disorder. So the, the way to do that if you probably wouldn't, you probably wouldn't need a sequence for that. The best way to do it would probably be to make a cut after you ask the question, and then insert the video of their response. If I'm understanding the situation correctly. Since you're not talking at the same time, sequences are for if you're in a live interview and everyone's speaking together in real time.

Ross [00:50:42]:
But maybe you were in real time, and then in which case, you would then need to just move the 7 clips to line up with your video. So yeah, it just depends how you how you did it. And we got 8 minutes left. If there's any more questions, keep them coming. So in the chat, I can't do that since you can see me while I talk. I'm not saying anything but I am nodding as if I'm listening. And you let's see. Okay.

Ross [00:51:22]:
So they are in real time like it's yeah. Okay. Yeah. You're there nodding. So, yeah. Again, it just depends how you have it set up. If there's separate videos, then you could cut yourself out if you wanted the the part of you nodding. Depends if you have both like side by side camera view or if you have it where there's so many so many ways you can set it up.

Ross [00:52:01]:
I I'd have to like know exactly the the context. Yeah. The video is not real time since I am playing both parts of interviewing and their AI responding to my questions. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Alright. So in the chat, I'll read it out for anyone who's following along.

Ross [00:52:42]:
The video is not real time since I am playing both parts. I'm interviewing and they are responding to my questions using my voice see change your app. It's not real time. So yeah, it just depends on, like, what you're going for. Probably have the, I'm assuming how you did it is you you played a video or you recorded a video of yourself and then you played the answers and then it was you responding to them If that's if I'm understanding correctly. Then the best way to do that in the future, if you can, would be to do a screen recording. You could use your webcam or an external camera even, and then record your screen with your app. And then you could change the layers.

Ross [00:53:52]:
You come up with a template where you have the response layer and then your layer side by side, if that's what you wanted. Yeah. I just have to see it. I'm trying to conceptualize this. So still got 4 minutes. If there's anything else related to that or anything else, you can let me know. Otherwise, I can show some other stuff. Okay.

Ross [00:54:33]:
So in the video, I ask all the questions all at once. I'm reading off of the script then I record myself answering the questions in a voice changer app with an AI avatar. Okay. Okay. Interesting. I'm trying to just think through how to do that. I'd have to see it. I'd have to see it and and see do you have examples of other people doing this or maybe if it completed videos you have? Because that would help me visualize the timing whether you need a sequence or not.

Ross [00:55:19]:
If it's all in 1 frame or if it's separate or if you could use multi cam. So sorry. I'm not able to to think in public on that 1 without seeing it. Let's see here. With the recent change, 3 or YouTube channel. Okay. I'll check that out. I'll, I'll pull that up so I can look at it after 3 works.

Ross [00:55:58]:
Cool. Yeah. And I might make a video out of it if if, and I can tag you if that's okay with you, And then, give my my solution. Made 2 full length videos already that I made for shorts. Okay. Yeah. I see your channel. I see your videos.

Ross [00:56:29]:
Cool. What was I gonna say? Well, we got 2 minutes left. So I'll use this time to pitch what I do in case you don't know. If you've made it this far. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I have a website in business called Descript Mastery. And primarily, I do tutoring.

Ross [00:56:49]:
I do a lot of just hourly calls. People book an hour with me and then you can go over any questions you have. And, yeah, it's whatever tailored to your goals and your your current level. Usually absolute beginners and you'll get the most benefit if you're a complete beginner because then you don't even know where to start. So I can help with that. I can show you all the what's possible and how I recommend that you go about learning the software. Or if you're expert, you've used other softwares and you're transitioning to the script. I can help with that.

Ross [00:57:26]:
And I have packages. You can book 1 session, you book 3 sessions, 5 sessions. And I have a sale right now for July where if you book a 5 session pack, then you get 2 calls for free. And then if you prefer the DIY option, I have a course. And the course is roughly 7 hours of content. And every single lesson, there's 90, almost a 100 lessons in it, has an action item. So after you learn the skill, then there's an assignment. And the idea is that you complete each use each individual skill as part of a larger project that you work on throughout the course.

Ross [00:58:09]:
So that by the end, as it says here, you'll have completed projects of your own and there's a community with it. So you can leave questions on any of the lessons and I respond quickly. Or you can, commute interact with other people or see the questions that have already been asked, stuff like that. And then I also do templates. So templates you I have free templates available for download. This is dscriptmastery.com/templates. And I do custom templates, which is the way I do this now is I used to have an order form, but just recently I started doing workshops. So if you want custom templates, we get on a call together and then I'll make the template live with your input because it's just it was way too difficult to email back and forth.

Ross [00:58:56]:
Like, what color do you want? What where do you want your logo? Where do you want? So we just get on a template, knock it out. Sometimes it takes 15 minutes. Sometimes it takes a couple hours. Just depends how many you want and how complicated they are. And then I have a standalone class, which is also part of the the master class. But if you wanna buy just the templates portion of it, it's $50 and it's descriptmastery.com/templatesmasterclass. I do these live streams once a week. This links to this YouTube channel that you're on right now.

Ross [00:59:30]:
I have the free templates that I already mentioned. I have a 7 day course where every day you get a lesson by email. And then I have a checklist for squad cast. If you're gonna make podcasts using squad cast, all this stuff is free. Recommended tools, these are just like affiliate links to things that I recommend, like this microphone, for example, and cameras, editing computers, stuff like that. That's pretty much it. If you have questions, the fast way to reach me is this chat bubble right here in the bottom right of every page of the discreetmastery.com. Or you can email me, or you can find me on these live streams.

Ross [01:00:14]:
All different ways to reach me. Thank you so much for joining, and I'll see you next week, hopefully, or hopefully in a tutoring session or something. Have a great 1.