Complete Descript Tutorial 2026: Zero to Expert

if you want to learn how to get the most out of descript one of the most powerful AI video editing tools out there that you've come to the right place in this tutorial I'll walk you through everything you need to know in order to use descript to its fullest potential you'll learn how to use descript text-based video editor and optimize your videos transcript with a single click I'll teach you how to use powerful AI tools like eye contact correction automatic captions green screen and even fully automated short form content creation plus so much more by the end of this video you'll be able to edit your own videos like a pro but first we need a descript account to make sure you get the best current deal click the link at the top of this video description to sign up for descript I recommend going with the Creator plan there is a free plan for descript but a lot of the exciting AI tools are extremely limited on the free plan so to get started click on get started here then in the top right let's click on sign up here you can sign up with Google or choose a different email address here fill out your information here and I'll meet you at the next step once you signed up for your account you'll have to input your payment information once that's done click on Save changes and you're now officially signed up and subscribed to descript I'll click on continue to descript from here I'll click on I know where I want to start and descript will open a brand new project for you let's navigate to descript homepage by heading to the top left hand side and we'll click the home button here I'll close out of this popup now I'll quickly go over the difference between projects and workspaces so the default project that descript created for us a moment ago is housed here under projects on the left hand side but under workspaces you'll notice there's a private workspace and then in my case Caleb's Drive workspace I'll click into the private workspace first here you can house your recordings your projects and you will be the only person that can see this workspace but if I click on Caleb's drive this is a shared workspace so if you invite any team members or any collaborators on a project they will be able to see all the recordings and projects within the shared workspace let's go back up to projects here I'll click into it and then to create a new project from scratch head to the right hand side and click on new project then I'll click on video project now we've arrived to the main interface you'll see while using descript on name your creation let's add something like Medics media demo video then you can upload a file Additionally you can paste a video link from YouTube record directly within descript and you have a couple other options here as well for most use cases you'll probably upload a file I'll click on this here and I have a pre-existing demo video that I want to upload I'll double click on this to upload it and it'll be added to descript descript is now transcribing our video file and you'll see this popup appear here our demo video is called descript demov video. mpp4 it recognizes that there's one speaker in the video which is me then descript wants to assign a speaker name to that person I'll click on speaker name and then we can type a name I'll type my own name which is Caleb and then I can add Caleb as a speaker I'll click on this then once I'm done I'll click click on done we'll let descript finish transcribing the video now on the left hand side our transcription is complete as you can see descript has assigned Caleb as the speaker for this scene and we can now begin editing now that our transcription is done it may feel intimidating on where you want to start the easiest way to understand how descript works is by understanding two fundamental principles the first is the transcript video editor this works the same way that Google doc or Microsoft Word would work you can highlight text in your video and delete it to make a cut then on the left hand side you have your scenes here you can see that we have one scene and this works similarly to a software like Microsoft PowerPoint or even Google Slides I'll go back to my transcript and press contrl Z to undo the cut and now let's preview our demo video I'll go down to the play button here at the bottom and I'll click play hey everyone I'm Caleb and um welcome to the show hey everyone I'm Caleb and welcome to the show as you can see I wasn't a fan of my first delivery on the intro line so I have an outtake in the beginning here that I need to cut out if we were to do this manually again I could highlight the text and then delete it and now if I press play hey everyone I'm Caleb and welcome to the show the outtake has been completely removed but I want to show you an incredibly exciting AI feature within descript so to start I'll press contrl Z on my keyboard to bring back the messed up intro from the beginning of the demo video to start using the AI tools within descript head to the right hand side and click on Underlord here you'll find an entire host of incredibly exciting AI tools for you to try out we'll start this section of the video by checking out the sound good Suite here we have edit for clarity Studio sound remove filler words remove retakes shorten word gaps and add chapters edit for clarity is the tool we'll be demoing in this video because it combines other AI tools like remove filler words and remove retakes into one easyto use tool let's click on it here we can change the edit intensity from low medium and heavy I'll bring it to medium before I click submit let's preview our demo video one more time to hear how it sounds without any changes I'll go down here and click on play hey everyone I'm Caleb and um welcome to the show hey everyone I'm Caleb and welcome to the show today I want to talk about um how AI is um changing the game when it comes to video editing as you can see I stumble across the script saying um having unnaturally long pauses and overall this could appear a lot more professional let's go back to the right hand side and click on submit to see what changes Underlord makes Underlord will work on your video's transcript and it will provide suggestions on how to make your video flow a lot better here you can see that Underlord understood that the first take of my video was incorrect so it suggests to remove it I can approve this change by clicking on the accept edit button or I can deny the change in this case I'll approve it here further into the video you can see I said filler words like um Underlord was able to find all of these within my transcript and it recommends removing them I'll approve this change Again by clicking on the green check mark I'll do it again for the next one as well I don't feel that I need any additional changes to my video so I'll deny these other two changes with that done let's click on done and let's watch through our demo video again to preview from the beginning I'll click on the first word in the transcript and then I'll click on play hey everyone I'm Caleb and welcome to the show today I want to talk about how AI is changing the game when it comes to video editing you can see Underlord did a great job of removing the original intro cutting out my filler words like um and making the video appear a lot smoother I was able to do all of this in just a few clicks now let's listen to the audio on our demo video here I'll click on play again hey everyone I'm Caleb and welcome to the show this video was recorded using an on camera microphone the audio doesn't sound very professional but fortunately with Underlord we're able to fix that in just a few seconds with Underlord Open click on Studio sound it will apply Studio sound to our video now with Studio sound applied let's go back to the top of our transcript and click on the first word to preview from the beginning and then I'll click on play to hear how the difference sounds hey everyone I'm Caleb and welcome to the show today I want to talk about how AI is your result with Studio sound will vary depending on the nature of your audio the better your audio is the more AI can improve it but we went from having a very echoey non full sound to our video sounding like it was recorded on a professional microphone now let's check out another really cool AI feature with an Underlord I'll go to the top right hand side and click on Underlord and we'll now take a look at the look good tool Suite if we zoom in on my face here you can see that I'm not actually looking at the camera camera lens which is a very common mistake but with Underlord we're able to fix that in a few clicks let's click on eye contact here and the effect will apply to our video now if we click on the top of our transcript again to preview from the beginning let's zoom in on the video and see what the difference looks like hey everyone I'm Caleb and welcome to the show today I want to talk about how AI is changing the game when it comes to video editing as you can see I'm making eye contact with the camera lens and it looks pretty natural again your results with this tool will vary depending on the nature of your video quality and how easy it is for the AI to track the eyes on your face now going back to Underlord on the top right hand side let's scroll down slightly and click on green screen a green screen effect will be applied to our video file and just like that we've removed the background from our video entirely if you're giving a presentation you have a slideshow deck or you have any media that you need to display behind you you're able to do it very quickly within descript now let's go back to Underlord one more time and if I scroll down to look good there are a few other options we have Center active speaker which will keep the active speaker in the center of the video's frame you can generate an image using Ai and now you can blur the speaker's background as well this gives you a lot of different options when it comes to changing how your video looks let's go back to the top right hand side and click on Underlord one more time now I want to get into scenes and layouts which is another exciting part of descript we covered this briefly in the beginning but to remind you on the left hand side we have a scene list here we currently have one scene and in our transcript a scene is marked with a slash to create a new scene let's find a natural gap between our paragraphs I'll click into the end of the paragraph here and then just like in a Google doc I'll press enter on my keyboard and then I'll type a slash on the left hand side you'll see a new scene appear if we want to change the layout of this scene let's go to the right hand side and click on scene and then under seen layout let's click on see more layouts now we have a ton of different options to choose from descript provides you with a default gallery here you can see they have one for a screen recording a zoom on the speaker a slightly different screen recording layout in more of a portrait format and if you don't like any of the default layouts you can click the back button here next descript and you have different layout packs to choose from again there are so many of these and you can even create your own layout pack based on your Brand's fonts colors logos and typical scenes you like to use I'll scroll up and click on the Berlin carrot dark layout pack and then I'll go for this screen recording here that puts me in the left hand side as a small circle let's click on this and it has now applied the layout to our second scene here in the preview panel you can see that we have a transparent background and me in the corner with the green screen effect applied in a circle cutout to change the transparent media let's click into it here and then click on ADD media you can add from your computer your project files and similar to before you can even record within descript in my case I'll click on ADD from computer and I have a demo screen recording I want to apply to the background I'll double click on that to open and it will upload into my project now in my transcript I want to go a little bit into my first scene so I can see the transition between scene one and scene two I'll click right here and now let's click play and save you so much time and that's why I'm so excited to share everything I've learned about descript in this video I'll break down everything I've learned and how it'll save you time on your next video editing project as you can see there's a natural transition between our scenes if we want to change the transitions here on the scene tab with it's still open you can see that we can change our in and our out transitions for example I can go from Smart transition to a blur and just like before I'll go back into our first scene and and click play and save you so much time and that's why I'm so excited to share there you can see that there was a blur transition between our first and second scene you're also free to change your layout at any time I'll go back up here and click on see more layouts and I can change it to this more portrait screen recording format simply by clicking on it go back into my first scene then click on play and save you so much time and that's why I'm so excited to share everything I've learned about descript as you can see I was able to completely transform the layout of my video and it took hardly any time at all before we move on let's take a look at layers when you're clicked into the scene tab here on the right hand side at the bottom you'll notice a small layers tab here we have our script which is our main background video that we started with in the beginning and then we have our screen recording demo on the right hand side you have a few different options you can lock a l layer you can hide a layer by clicking on it you can mute a layer and you can solo a layer every piece of content that you add to your video project within a scene will be seen as a layer by descript this can be anything from media you import from your computer content you record within descript or other things like captions which we'll learn about now on the right hand side click on captions here and you'll see this list appear that contains a bunch of different pre-made caption Styles let's scroll up and click on the karaoke classic caption style once I click on that it will apply to my video and you'll see my text in my transcript has a blue underline that means that this content within my transcript is appearing in my video's captions here in the preview panel you'll see my captions appear here within the preview panel you do have a few different options for changing your captions colors and fonts but to have more control navigate to the right hand side and click on a layer you'll have an entire panel now dedicated to changing your caption style and if you want even more control over how your captions look underneath style click on these two sliders here we can change our fill color we can add a black border which I'll do by clicking on the plus you can change the background and the color of your active word I'll click onto this blue here and I'll go for a deeper blue color like this one here now let's click out of this and we can see that our captions now stand out from the video background a bit more let's click on the x button to exit out and back on our preview panel we can actually see our captions now let's see how this actually looks when it's animated on screen and that's why I'm so excited to share everything I've learned about descript we now have fully automated captions on our video but what happens if something in our transcript is spelled wrong when descript is transcribing our video initially it's bound to get some things wrong it can be anything like brand names or speaker names but correcting these issues is super easy as you can see here instead of descript it transcribed as DS script to fix this and also fix it within our captions highlight the incorrect word click on correct and then simply type in the correct spelling I'll type descript here if the error only occurs once in the video then just click correct but if it happens multiple times you can click correct all in my case it only happens once so I'll click correct and as you can see here it's changed from DS script to descript and you'll see the change reflect here in the captions as well another exciting feature that I want to share with you is within descript if you say something wrong in your video you can actually use AI dubbing to completely fix it if I scroll up slightly in my transcript here I can find the section that says back in the day if you made a mistake while exporting your content during my recording I meant to say recording your content now if I want to fix this with AI dubbing I'll highlight the line that I want to change then I'll click on regenerate then I'll type in the correct wording in this case I'll change exporting to recording then I'll click on regenerate then I'll need to record myself saying this statement this will train the speaker within descript and authorize its use go ahead and record this statement here I've now recorded the statement and I'll click submit descript will authorize the speaker the speaker's been authorized and it's now regenerating the part of the script that I want to correct let's go back slightly in our transcript here and let's hear how that sounds if you made a mistake while recording your content you either had to manually reshoot or spend hours as you can see within just a few seconds I was able to transform that line and correct it directly within descript instead of having to go back and manually re-shoot the entire video next let me scroll down and go towards the end of the transcript here now we understand the transcript video editor we understand scenes transitions layouts AI tools and captions but to full fully Master descript we need to head to the bottom left hand side and click on show timeline here we have a traditional video editing timeline that includes waveforms layers cuts and we can expand the timeline to get a better look at it by bringing our Mouse to the top here clicking and dragging to make the timeline larger all of the cuts all of the layers all of the changes that we've made to our video appear here in our timeline starting from the top we see our captions ler we see our screen recording demo we see our base video and transcript and our videos audio to fine-tune and make refined Cuts within your video I would recommend doing that within the timeline editor the transcript video editor is a great way to get your video edited quickly but to fully set the pacing and fine-tune your video again I would do that within the timeline Editor to zoom in on your timeline hold down control and scroll your mouse wheel up then at the bottom here we can move this slider and unnatural pauses in your video are indicated with an ellipses here to adjust the pause on that video grab the end of it and then drag it to close it down now on my play head I can click at the top of the timeline here to go back a little bit and then I can click on play to see how that cut looks so much time and that's why I'm so excited to share everything I've learned about descript let's take a look at our toolbar here before moving on so we can change the playback speed of our video we can jump to a chapter marker we have some tools here we have a select tool a blade a range and slip tool and then a hand tool to close the timeline and go back to the view we had before just click on hide timeline here now let's jump into another exciting Underlord AI feature this being creating short clips and highlight reels let's go to the right hand side and click on Underlord again and let's scroll down to repurpose here we can create Clips create a highlight reel find highlights and even translate our video to start let's click on create Clips this allows Underlord to pick your most viral worthy moments and create clips that pop essentially Underlord will scan through your entire video let's say you have a podcast or a training seminar it'll analyze your entire video and create short form clips for you to share on social media platforms like Tik Tok Instagram reals or Facebook this can save you so much time to start let's change our number of clips from 5 to two I'll change the clip duration from 30 seconds to 10 seconds then I'll find a layout that I want to go with I'll check them out here and I think I'll go for this layout here you can provide a topic so Underlord understands the goal of your content a little bit more let's say for example you have a comedy podcast you can tell Underlord that you wanted to find the funniest moments within your podcast it'll go into analyzing your video with that goal and when Underlord is done you'll have funny clips to share on your social media Platforms in my case I'll just click on submit and Underlord will go through and analyze your video here you can see it's created a clip and it even includes a virality score in this case it provided this clip with a 4.8 meaning that this this clip has a good chance of going viral online now let's click on done and then at the top of our project this is a good time to understand compositions when we created our project we also had to create a composition within it and that's the space we've been operating in throughout this entire video if we want to change our composition navigate to the top and click this drop down here then the clips that Underlord created for us are in a different composition let's click on the new clip composition that under Lord created for us and you can see here on the left hand side that we have two new scenes created let's see what Underlord created for us back in the day if you made a mistake while exporting your content you either had to manually reshoot or spend hours manually video editing as you can see it centered me in the frame it provided automatic captions and it edited the video for us if you have hours and hours of video content this is a great way to save a ton of time another way to switch between your compositions if you navigate to the right hand side while clicked into project you can see your compositions listed here to go back to our main composition let's click on the Medics media demo video composition and now we're back now let's go back to Underlord on the right hand side let's scroll back down to repurpose and here we can create a highlight reel this will create a new composition with all of your best moments if you're not looking for viral short form click Clips this is a good way to condense an hour-long recording down to one or 2 minutes let's briefly touch over a few different features that you'll find with an Underlord as I mentioned before you can find highlights and even translate your video into other languages this includes your transcript captions and audio under publish we have some other AI script writing tools we can draft a title summarize draft show notes and even draft a YouTube description we have a couple other drafts for social blog posts underneath WR we have brainstorm write a script write an outline and rewrite now you can do all of these tasks within another AI companion like chat GPT but it's cool that you're able to keep everything within descript to Showcase some other tools let's go to the right hand side and click on record once here you can record directly into your script you can choose your camera your microphone and if you want to share a screen you can even record with others let's say you're doing a training or a podcast you can record that podcast directly within descript let's now click on elements here you can add text placeholder media shapes Dynamic text wave fors progress bars annotations overlays and even frames there are tons of different options for things that you can add on top of your video and it makes tasks like Motion Graphics that are typically done in a software like Adobe After effects incredibly simple in descript now let's go to the last option here at the bottom clicking on this will open up our stock video and audio library you have video gifts and images here to choose from and then if I click on audio you can preview and add different stock music to your project now we've created our video we've added captions we've created short form Clips let's talk about exporting our video let's go to the right hand side and click on publish if we want to publish this directly to somewhere like YouTube we can do that here or we can click on export within video we can choose to export right now it's our current composition but we can change this to scene align break or all compositions we can change the resolution right now it's set to 720p but I could make this 4K if I wanted to we can change the quality which is currently set to medium I'll change this to high we can configure our audio metadata and advanced settings as well here at the top you can change your audio GIF and timeline settings but in particular I want to call out the transcript and subtitle menus let's click into transcript and here we can export our transcript by itself right now it's set to export as a Microsoft Word document I'll click into this but we can change the format here as well if we wanted to then under subtitles we can export our subtitles at as an SRT or VT format let's close this and go back to video once you're ready to export your video click on export and your video will begin exporting here now to go back to the main dashboard navigate to the top left hand side and click on the home icon here lastly let's click on learn descript now with the fundamentals that you've learned from this crash course video you can check out the official trainings provided by descript these are also short crash course Style videos about specific topics and I'd encourage you to check them out if you have any other questions about descript leave them down in the comments I try to read and respond to as many as I can thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video