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March—the only month that’s also a command. And trudge on we did, putting one foot in front of the other, clinging to some childish hope of spring,* but knowing you would probably unsubscribe before we reached the end.
But you didn’t. You haven’t. You remain among the not-unsubscribed. So apparently you’re still interested in reading about everything Descript released this month. Cool! Read on.
*Northern Hemisphere only; in Australia March brings fall, and remembrance of the Great Lager Famine
Exports and Publishing: higher quality, still fast
To address some issues with color and audio-video sync in exporting from Descript—for both the publish and export features—we made some calculated upgrades to our publishing, striking a better balance between quality and speed. What you see in the editor should now match your final export exactly. Next we’ll be working on even faster exports, so keep your eyes out for more soon. In other publishing news, we’ve set the default publishing privacy on new Drive plans from public to unlisted (i.e., you need a link to see it).
Learn more at our Help Center.
New AI Action: Find all highlights
You’ve heard of Find good clips—now meet Find all highlights. This AI Action will identify out the main narrative thread running through your video or podcast, then locate and select the moments that best represent that throughline. Think of it as Find good clip’s more thorough, bookish sibling. Use it to instantly generate promotional clips for your podcast or long-form video, to condense a long (boring, tortuous, horrific) Zoom meeting into the most salient bits, or edit down any content into its most essential form. There’s no limit on the number of clips, so go nuts.
Learn more at our Help Center.
Drive & Editor: March in baby steps
March was also a time for smaller improvements, and for tackling some of your long-standing requests. We added new Drive admin features that give you greater control over default publishing privacy, and new Drives now default to Unlisted rather than Public. Admins can change project-level editing permissions for guest members now. In the Editor, we added a new multi-tool dropdown to the selection toolbar, with Ignore, Delete, and Remove from Transcript. And we made it easier to delete text after using an AI Action so you’re not stuck with a pile of ignored text.
Those are the highlights. For everything else—every spec, every crumb, every dreg—scrape to the bottom in our Changelog. Or read the latest in our How They Made It series to learn how Vanessa Quirk used her storytelling prowess—with help from Descript, and a unique non-profit business structure—to help give voice to marginalized communities.
And if you’re using Descript at all you should definitely join our community on Discord. You’ll meet other Descript users, get advice, and talk to the Descript team.