Full Tutorial Transcript

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[00:00:00] Hello, aspiring video editors.

[00:00:04] In this video, I’m going to show you how I use the DS script software to quickly edit my social and YouTube videos.

[00:00:12] If you’re not familiar with Descript, it’s an AI powered video editing and content creation software.

[00:00:17] That makes tedious functions like removing pauses and adding captions super simple.

[00:00:23] If you’re looking for a way to more quickly edit, Or if you’re an experienced editor that doesn’t always want to open up Adobe Premiere or whatever tool you’re used to, this can be a really great option.

[00:00:33] There’s a free plan so you can get a sense of how it works, and if you’d like to try it, click the link in the description to get your own copy and follow along.

[00:00:41] Before we get started, I’d like to ask you to like this video and subscribe to my channel. And also keep in mind, if you do sign up for this tool, I will make a couple dollars.

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[00:00:50] Once you’ve downloaded and installed the software, you can open it up and it brings you into the project interface.

[00:00:55] I’ve been using this tool for over two years now, so you’ll see I have quite a few projects, but yours is probably blank.

[00:01:01] So to start editing, I’ll go over here and create a new video project.

[00:01:05] On the left here, I have all the different elements that I can add to my video, and I’ve prerecorded my content on my phone.

[00:01:11] so to get started, I’m just gonna take the clip I want to use and drag it in and let Descript process the media

[00:01:18] as it’s transcribing the audio to text, it’s going to ask me if I want to input my speaker name.

[00:01:22] So I’ll just put rock. If you have multiple speakers, you can identify different people. But in this case, it’s just me. So I’ll hit done.

[00:01:29] And what it’s doing now is uploading and processing my media so that it can be used in Descript. Now, this does take a few minutes, but it’s 100 percent worth the wait.

[00:01:38] In the meantime, I’ll give my file a more accurate name than the name my phone gave it.

[00:01:43] It’s imported the transcription of my video to the main area here. And I can edit this video by just changing the text. But before we do that, let’s use some of the AI features to make it easier to so you can see, I’ve said a lot of ums and okays. And to go through and edit those out in a traditional software takes a lot of clipping and removing and sliding back together. But with Descript I can just go to the Actions panel,

[00:02:07] And choose Remove Filler Words.

[00:02:09] Now you’ll see it’s highlighted all of the words it’s detected as fillers that probably don’t need to be in my final video.

[00:02:15] In this case, it seems to have done a good job of picking out all of the ones I would want to remove

[00:02:20] But it’s not perfect.

[00:02:21] So if you do see words that you don’t want removed, you can just click the little drop down here and it shows you everything that it’s about to take out.

[00:02:29] so for example, if or something was a word I wanted to keep in, I would just deselect it before processing. In my case, I want it all gone, so I’ll reselect this

[00:02:38] and then click remove all.

[00:02:39] Boom. It’s that easy.

[00:02:41] now, since I shot this video as one long take where I just restarted multiple times to get my point across, the next thing that I’m going to do is use the function remove retakes.

[00:02:52] so to remove my failed takes, I’m just going to go to the action search, click ask AI, and then choose remove retakes.

[00:02:59] you’ll see it’s auto filled the command detect and delete all the repeated takes from this recording. So I just hit enter.

[00:03:05] It’s going to make some suggestions on how to edit the script based on the times I had to start over again.

[00:03:10] This looks good. So I will click apply edits to script.

[00:03:14] And then hit close.

[00:03:15] Now I’m going to play my video just to see what I’ve got. So I hit play. And what I’m noticing is there’s spaces between words where I had to pause and think.

[00:03:27] So the next thing I’m going to do is remove the spaces so it snaps along at the speed of a current attention span.

[00:03:33] to do that I again go up to the actions panel, choose shorten word gaps, and then here you can choose the length of the gaps that you want to bring smaller.

[00:03:42] Now it’s suggesting any gap over 0. 3 be shortened. And you can see here there’s 13 of them within my content.

[00:03:49] I also have the option here to choose how long the new gap is going to be so that it still feels somewhat natural.

[00:03:55] So based on my experience, I’m going to shorten this up a bit more to be 0.12 but every video is different, so you may need to tweak the settings a little for your specific content.

[00:04:04] Next, I’m going to hit shorten all and voila, all of my gaps have been removed from the video.

[00:04:10] Just like that, we’ve taken a two minute video and already cut it down to 40 seconds of content, So it will work on TikTok or another short form video platform.

[00:04:18] Now, since I included a little mic check at the beginning, I’m going to just highlight that text

[00:04:23] and hit delete.

[00:04:24] And in the timeline here, the edit has already been made for me. So if you’re not comfortable with more complex editing tools, This really couldn’t be easier.

[00:04:34] Now I’m going to quickly play my video again to see what might need to be done to get it ready. Hello, in this video I’m going to make a video that I will edit with Descript and I will show you the features of how Descript works.

[00:04:40] I will show you how to remove pauses and filler words from your video.

[00:04:41] one thing that I’ve noticed is right here, it didn’t catch a gap because there was background noise happening. So to adjust this,

[00:04:48] I’m just going to make my timeline a little bit bigger here.

[00:04:50] I’m going to make sure the select tool is engaged, and then I’m just going to grab where the clip is split and slide it back to a point that makes sense and plays naturally.

[00:05:00] Tweak it a little bit more. Play it again. and perfect.

[00:05:04] in this section here, there’s another little gap that I’d like to take out, but it’s registering this whole clip as a single clip. So what you can do is choose the blade tool, click where you’d like to split it, and then just use the select tool to adjust a little bit further.

[00:05:18] If you need to scrub around on this timeline, you can just use the hand And it lets you click and drag to move to the position in the video that you like You’ll also notice up in the top here. It’s moving the script to show you where you are in the script

[00:05:30] Now that I’m happy with the script and the flow of the content, I’m going to go ahead and add the captions on here.

[00:05:36] You just click the four squares for the template gallery. and then choose captions. And you’ll see they have most of the standard caption types you see on social media. So you can choose if you want a karaoke highlight, single word, different colors, different slants.

[00:05:51] I personally like the outline with the yellow and all you need to do to add it to your video is double click. And it will automatically do the work to put it onto the video and time it to follow what you’re saying.

[00:06:03] So if I hit play here. I will show you how to remove pauses. It’s automatically going to follow what I’m saying in the video. You can also customize how this looks

[00:06:13] By just clicking on the element, You can also click into the settings and choose the border, what color the active word should be, what color the future word should be, so you can make them a little bit less noticeable, or black, or blue.

[00:06:25] But looking at it in blue, I think I’m going to just change it back here.

[00:06:29] Now personally I find two lines to be a bit much so I can just slide it so that there’s less space for the words to show in. I’d also like the words to be a little bit bigger so I’ll make this 110 so that they’re big and really obvious as the video is playing.

[00:06:45] The other thing that’s really cool is it’s automatically placed the captions in a safe zone.

[00:06:50] when you go to post your content on different social networks, a safe zone makes sure that the text is readable and doesn’t have additional interface buttons blocking the text that your viewer is trying to read. So make sure your captions are in a safe zone.

[00:07:03] And if you want to be safe, subscribe to my channel so you get more hot tips like these ones.

[00:07:08] Now my captions are on there and they look great, but I really don’t love the background of my house.

[00:07:14] So I’d like to remove it. And to do that, again, Descript makes it pretty simple. I just click on the media, and you’ll see on the right hand side under effects

[00:07:21] it has green screen as an option, So I can just click that and wait patiently. You’ll see here, it’s telling me that it is processing. Now it’s doing this on the server. So sometimes it does take a minute for it to process it and return it to the software.

[00:07:35] But when compared to other tools where you have to set the threshold and mask the background a certain way, it is extremely easy.

[00:07:43] And just like magic the background is gone now I can also grab this clip and resize it to make more room or place myself in the space However, I would like

[00:07:54] the old background was kind of ugly But that’s where the integrated media in this software is really interesting. So on the left hand side here, you’ll see we have the option to add videos, images, illustrations, and other items.

[00:08:07] So if for example, I wanted to be in a wheat field, I could go to the video section here and type in wheat field and it will search through stock photography that is included in my subscription. and give me options for media to import into my composition.

[00:08:22] so if I wanted to represent my prairie roots, I can just double click on the media and it will load it into the composition for me.

[00:08:29] Then right click and change the layer order to send it to the back Just like that. I am now presenting my message in a wheat field

[00:08:38] If there are different parts of your video that you might want different backgrounds The easiest way to do that is to use the built in chapters function Now a chapter is basically

[00:08:48] a section of your content and each chapter can have different settings for pretty much every feature so that’s why it’s important to add your captions first because if you do put chapters in you will need to apply the settings in each chapter to make them all match and it’s kind of a pain in the ass.

[00:09:05] Now supposing I want a different background for this line here, I can add a chapter by just adding a slash. and you’ll see on the left here it’s added a second marker for where that chapter begins.

[00:09:16] If I wanted to add a third chapter for my outro, I would just click where I want it, then add a slash on my keyboard or click the button. You’ll also notice that I’ve lost my Wheatfield background, so if I open up my timeline here The reason is that my wheat field background is not long enough to go the full length of the clip that I’m creating. Now this is fine as I want a different background for each chapter.

[00:09:38] but to confine the wheat field to chapter one, I will just slide that back And it will automatically lock to where chapter one ends.

[00:09:45] As I mentioned, it treats each chapter independently. So, in chapter 2 here, I can grab myself and move it to the corner.

[00:09:53] And now, when I play it It works. It’ll automatically move me when it crosses into the new chapter.

[00:09:58] To go to the beginning of any chapter, you can just click on the image here, and it automatically takes you to the first frame.

[00:10:04] For chapter 2, I think I’d like a static image as the background. So, similar to the video, I’m just going to go into

[00:10:10] my left media panel here and choose images.

[00:10:13] Now you’ll see it saved my search from before, so since we’re going with a wheat theme, I’m just going to keep it going and choose the image that I’d like. Again, it’s going to import it on the top, so I will just scale the image, right click, and send it to the back.

[00:10:27] Now, in the timeline here, you’ll notice it filled that image to go through the full chapter. And that is why I said you want to do all of the assets you want on your full video first, and then add the chapters. Otherwise, you need to do a lot of work to drag things to the different places as each chapter is individual.

[00:10:48] Another thing I really like is how the sound effects are built right in. if I wanted to add a transition sound when this chapter happens, I can just click into sound effects, and you’ll see it’s saved the wheat field search, but in this case I’m looking for something a little more interesting, so maybe a woosh?

[00:11:03] and it brings back a list of all the whooshes available in their sound effects library. And I can preview them by just hitting the play buttons. That one’s pretty good. Ooh, I like that fast one. So I’m just going to double click that, and again, it will automatically load it into the timeline, put it on a track for me.

[00:11:19] Then when I hit play The sound effect is in there

[00:11:22] now. A lot of these sound effects will come in at a level that’s too loud for the mix. So what you can do to adjust it is make sure you’re using the select tool, click on the sound, and then up on the right hand side here, you can just grab the audio volume and slide it to a level that makes sense.

[00:11:37] Audition it so you can hear what it sounds like. And we’re good to go.

[00:11:40] Now, down in my third section here, I’m going to add another static image, And this time I’m going to use an image from Unsplash.

[00:11:47] If you’re unfamiliar with Unsplash, it’s a giant repository of user contributed photos that you can use in your videos and websites.

[00:11:55] and just like the other ones, you just click in the menu,

[00:11:58] type in your search,

[00:11:59] and double click to add it to your file.

[00:12:01] Set the layer order to the back and you’re done.

[00:12:03] With the unsplash content, make sure you understand the rights as some of these photos do expect attribution. So when you post it on the media platform, you may be expected to credit the person who took the photo. And that is a hundred percent fair.

[00:12:18] Now, if I felt this wasn’t the right photo for my composition,

[00:12:21] I can choose the select tool, click the item, delete it. And maybe this time I’ll try an AI generated one so you’ll see here I have generate image as an option I’ll click in

[00:12:30] type in my prompt and hit enter wait patiently

[00:12:33] It’s come back with three kind of crazy options, but I like this turbulent one, so I’ll double click it.

[00:12:38] And do the same thing I did with the others, where we just right click, send it to the back,

[00:12:43] the last thing I’m going to do is add a sticker to pop up when I say sticker in the script.

[00:12:49] Choose where I say stickers.

[00:12:51] And then I’m going to add a chapter there. As the software will automatically place a sticker to the beginning of a chapter.

[00:12:58] And I’m going to choose the media.

[00:13:00] Then Giphy stickers.

[00:13:01] And then I’m going to select the one that I want by just double clicking.

[00:13:04] And like everything else, it just gets added to the timeline.

[00:13:07] I’ll resize it and put them on the horizon line here. You’ll notice on the bottom that it is filling up the whole chapter. And the reason that is, is it’s set to loop now, if I only want it to loop one time. So it only comes with that word.

[00:13:21] what I can do is just make sure I’m clicked on the sticker.

[00:13:23] And then in the right hand panel here where it says loop, I’m just going to set it to one time and you’ll see it’s shortened it in the timeline.

[00:13:30] So now when I play it back, the sticker only pops up when I say stickers.

[00:13:35] Now I would call this video ready to share. So what I’m going to do is go up to the publish tab in the top right here and click publish.

[00:13:42] By default, it’s going to give me the option to publish it to the Descript site where there will be a web link that I can share with people.

[00:13:50] If you’re sharing on YouTube, you can connect your account and just click here and push it automatically to your YouTube. But since I’m sharing it on my phone, I need a physical file to upload to TikTok and Instagram.

[00:14:03] since this video was shot at 4k, I want to export it at that level. So I will also change the resolution to the max of 4k. and then instead of hitting the publish button, you can hit the download here. It will also publish it to Descript. So you can do that, or you can go to the export panel.

[00:14:19] And again, choose the resolution at 4K. Make sure the quality is set to high.

[00:14:24] And then just hit export. It’ll bring up a window where you can choose where it goes on your file system. And then you just hit save. And again, wait patiently. It’ll give you an update for how the video is being exported right here on the right hand side

[00:14:36] now that the video’s been exported, I can take it and upload it to the platforms where it’s going to be distributed.

[00:14:42] but before I do that, there’s one other Descript feature that I really like,

[00:14:46] and that’s the ability to export the subtitles. To do that, I just click publish. Choose export and then choose subtitles. And it will automatically give me an SRT file that platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube can automatically interpret.

[00:14:59] you can choose whether or not you want it to show the speakers. In my case, it’s a one person video, so I don’t need to do that. All I need to do is click export,

[00:15:07] and hit save.

[00:15:08] Now when I put my video on LinkedIn, I can apply the subtitles and know that what shows up is gonna be correct. I use Descript to edit my social posts. I use it to edit this video. And if you think it might help you, I recommend you give it a try.

[00:15:22] The link to do so is below and I’d appreciate if you got me a few of those affiliate dollars.

[00:15:27] if you have any questions, feel free to put them in the comments below and I’ll do my best to help you out. And

[00:15:32] Thanks for watching, and I’ll catch you next time.

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