While Camtasia and Descript share some recording and editing features, Descript’s AI-powered tools will save you a ton of editing time — and give you the power to make a professional-grade video, as easy as editing a doc.
From automatic captions and filler-word removal to live collaboration, Descript saves you hours of drudgery and gives you everything you need to make screencasts that engage and educate.
Camtasia and Descript have comparable video recording tools: you can record your screen, webcam, microphone, and system audio in either. They both let you select which part of your screen to record, and both make it easy to add b-roll.
The moment you stop recording though, Descript’s AI-powered editing will instantly start making your life easier.
Camtasia works like any traditional, timeline-based editing software. That means constant zooming in and out of the timeline, fiddling with waveforms, and scrubbing through the recording to find what you need.
In Descript you get an auto-generated transcript — then edit your video just like you would edit a doc. To cut part of your video, just select that text in the transcript and tap delete, and it’s gone. And you can find any clip or moment you’re looking for in seconds — just search the transcript like you would a doc.
In Camtasia, like all legacy timeline editors, you have to manually cut filler words (“um,” “uh”, “like”, etc.). It can take hours.
Descript’s automatic filler word detection, on the other hand, can find and highlight filler words, so you can remove them all, all at once, with a single click. Descript will delete the words from your audio track and automatically crossfade the audio on either side, creating a pretty seamless edit — and save you a ton of time.
With Camtasia, every mistake or omission in your audio will mean re-recording and splicing in the corrected version. It’s not only a hassle, it can create jarring discrepancies in the audio and video, as things like room tone and lighting shift between recordings.
Descript solves all these problems using generative AI. With Overdub, you can create a text-to-speech clone of your voice, then fix audio mistakes or add new voiceover just by typing; Overdub will match the tonal characteristics to make the new word blend right in. It’s vastly easier than re-recording.
Changing layouts — e.g., from only your screen to only your face — is doable in Camtasia, but tricky. Every time you want to switch, you’ll have to do it manually, using layers and the blade tool, from scratch — even if you’re using the same few layouts over and over.
Descript makes it way simpler. Just record your screen and your webcam in the Descript editor; Descript will capture them as separate tracks. To change layouts you just set up each layout as a scene by typing a slash, then right click to copy your layout, and just paste it each time you want to use it.
Only Descript lets you publish a shareable web page, where collaborators and colleagues can watch the video, see the transcript, and leave comments.
In Descript, collaboration works like Google Docs. So you can share the video without downloading, and colleagues can see edits and updates just by refreshing the page.
Only Descript constantly saves your files to the cloud. That means you don’t have to worry about saving constantly to avoid losing changes. And you can see and revert to previous versions.
Remove your background with a click, then put yourself in any setting you can imagine.
Descript’s AI-powered voice-regeneration tool will make even the lowest-quality audio sound like it was recorded in a studio.
Descript makes trimming a screen recording (or any video) as easy as editing a doc.
To get everything you get in Descript, you’d have to buy a subscription to Camtasia (for recording and editing), Audiate (for transcription services), and pay for access to Camtasia’s Asset Library. That doesn’t include Camtasia support beyond your first year.
Descript Pro gives you all that functionality at less than half the cost
Camtasia is a handy tool, but Descript does everything Camtasia does, and arms you with these incredibly useful AI-powered tools, for less than half the cost.
That’s why the overall winner is Descript. The screen recording options may be mostly the same, but that’s the easy part of making video. As soon as you stop recording, Descript makes it easier to make a better video, faster. Editing is just more intuitive, even more fun, than in Camtasia.
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Descript was built for exactly that. It contains your entire podcast workflow, from recording to editing to publishing. Record remotely. Use the timeline or Descript’s easy transcript editor to polish your audio and video. Then share with collaborators to get real-time feedback and comments. Then export or publish directly to your platform of choice.
You sure can. One of the things that makes Descript special is its ridiculously easy transcript editor. You can add, delete, and rearrange words or entire sections just like in a doc. Then, like magic, the edits are reflected in your audio or video. But hey — if you want to work in the timeline, you can use that too. We’re flexible.
Descript lets you record your podcast, or video, through your phone’s web browser. And it doesn’t take up space on your phone. Plus, it’s easier for your guests—they don’t have to install anything just to be on your show.
As simple as Descript may be, it’s just as powerful. You can save serious time with our smart script editor. But we know flexibility is important and sometimes you wanna get into the nitty gritty. So Descript has a fully-featured, multi-track timeline editor too. Best of both worlds. Learn more about our timeline editor.
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