Descript's Underlord

I have been a longtime user of Descript. Pretty much from when they launched, I have been a Descript user. I think Descript is a great case study for a Category Disrupter and the way they have been evolving is fascinating to watch. As an avid podcaster, Descript is THE tool I use to produce all my podcasts. Now I hardly open Adobe Premiere or Audition anymore.

Now recently, Descript had its biggest overhaul and announced Underlord.

Key Features of Underlord

• Automated Editing: Underlord can automatically remove filler words, shorten word gaps, apply studio sound, remove retakes, and edit for clarity with varying levels of aggressiveness.
• Clip Creation: It can generate multiple potential video clips from a recording, complete with layouts, captions, and star ratings. Creators can keep, discard, or further edit these AI-generated clips.
• Highlight Reels: Underlord can create longer highlight reels by automatically selecting and compiling the best quotes and funniest moments from a podcast or video.
• Translation: It offers caption translation into 25 languages, with upcoming audio translation capabilities that can use AI voice cloning to translate speech into different languages while preserving the creator's voice.
• Animations and Layouts: Underlord provides access to hundreds of new layouts, caption styles, build-in/build-out animations, and animation-easing curves to enhance video production quality.
• Content Promotion: It can assist with writing YouTube descriptions, show notes, and social media posts, although its emoji usage may need moderation.

Full Disclosure: I have been using the feature as a beta tester and it's been a few episodes that I have used it on now. And I want to use this article to give my honest opinion. Descript is famous for constantly pushing out updates. Every time I open a project, I have to restart it as a new version has been released! But hey, that's a small price to pay for the sheer fun of using Descript. And this is not a paid review as well. :-)

I was working on a podcast episode recently and I had to pull out a few clips for use as audiograms. My normal workflow till now was to

• scroll through the transcript to identify interesting quotes.
• save it to a new composition
• create a layout in Canva
• import it into Descript and layout the audio and the live captions

Enter Underlord

So, I clicked on Underlord - navigated to the option - Repurpose - And clicked on Find Highlights.

And lo behold it worked!

It found a bunch of interesting clips and I clicked on create clips. It showed a bunch of layout options magically as if it were reading my mind and I settled on one - tweaked it and I was done. The best part all of these clips are available within the episode project that I was working on. So, I don't have to exit the workflow. That is KILLER! UI GOLD!!

And here is what was published on Linkedin.

In my opinion, this is a game-changer when it comes to podcast production. It allows you to focus on the creativity of producing a great episode. And it is an awesome example of how to correctly implement AI as part of a software product toolset.

I love producing podcasts and I look forward to producing more in the future. Stay Tuned!!