Use Transcript Timestamps (SRT, VTT) to improve Imported transcripts | Voters

Use Transcript Timestamps (SRT, VTT) to improve Imported transcripts

Aaron Gotlieb

Rather than ignore the time stamps, use the time stamps in an imported transcript to help the AI match up the text to the audio file. If the person doesn't start talking again for thirty seconds, the text won't try to 'match up' to the silence.

July 2, 2020

Connor Paone

The competition is doing it and if Descript added this one feature it would totally ruin the value proposition for VEED.IO

https://www.veed.io/use-cases/video-translations

Connor Paone

Ok well how about being able to import subtitles with the timestamps? Is there a way to have that happen? Right now it says that it “automatically ignores the timestamps in order to use the AI to perfectly sync the audio and video.”

Basically all I am going to do, if descript doesn’t have that option, is:

Ask descript to export the script with timestamps for subtitles
Use chat gpt to translate and keep the timestamps in place, then do a manual review & refinement
Ask gpt to convert it into an srt file
Load it into iMovie or another free software, add the translated subtitles with the timestamp and then export

But it won’t be as good as descript and I love the way descript does the captions haha

Ashley Shuler

We need SRT! I use Veed.io and can’t currently import.

Dan Reyes-Cairo

Merged in a post:

Import FROM Premiere with Transcript (SRT)

Harry Hawk

After working in DESCRIPT and Premiere export the project back to Descript with the transcript (SRT) data intact.
--
Our typical "tool chain" might be record a livestream on Zoom/Facebook.
Get a human transcription, import the video into DESCRIPT and sync with the human transcript.
Highlight the sections of the video we want for the final master. 
Copy highlights into a new composition. 
Export to Premiere, then in Premiere import SRT file. Create a final edit. 
---
It is at this point we would want to export the project back to Descript with the actual final captions.
Why? at this point we will make many smaller edits, snippets, Etc. but only after we have our master edit.

April 11, 2022

Dan Reyes-Cairo

Merged in a post:

Import subtitle file

Ye Shen

Import subtitle file and match the timeline that users can use Descript fantastic editing function, when other language is not supported, yet. I understand multi-language is hard to do, but there are other platforms can do such thing for particular language, why not let them to do their job and let us become Descript users

April 11, 2022

Dan Reyes-Cairo

Merged in a post:

Import caption files with time stamps

Courtney Craven

The ability to add vtt or srt files with time stamps (without having to wait for auto-sync) would be amazing.

April 11, 2022

Toggle Rat

Please, if I've taken the time to painstakingly timestamp the transcript, the very least descript can do is try to match the words between the timestamps to the audio rather than putting it wherever it wants. 
Here's what I've had to do to use transcripts for my website: I have to get the transcript from descript, have someone edit the transcript for myriad errors, put it back into descript so it can sync the correct transcript, export the transcript with time stamps, then edit the time stamps so that they are correct. 
I'd love to use your audiogram feature more, but I can't do it because the timing is always, always, always off on the words. Always, without exception, Descript claims the words to the wrong time stamps for long enough stretches that even without word-level animation, the timing is incredibly off. The longer the audio file, the more likely this is to happen. I've also found that it doesn't match the timing the same way twice, if I tell it to realign. 
The transcripting part of this has always been and continues to be a huge pain point for me. Editing your program's mistakes in Descript is basically impossible because it insists on making me zoom waay in and move individual words, so editing the timestamps in a text file is actually way, way easier. If you guys can make it so that I can import the transcript back into descript after editing the time stamps, that would make my life 200 times easier. 
Alternatively, if you would let me tell you in Descript what time stamp range I want a selection to claim to, that would be incredible, too.

Patrick Pittman

This would be so incredibly useful for me. One of my current longform projects is filmed in a relatively obscure language (Tetum, from Timor Leste). I have translations to all videos in timecoded SRT format. If it were possible to bring in such a transcript and work with it in the same way I would with English, even if the files had to be changed to some other text format first, it would be an absolute revelation for editing this particular film, and future non-english ones. Like, I don't need speech recognition obviously, but if all the other features (multiple highlighting, copying and pasting into a master composition) were available, even only at the level of text blocks as demarcated in the SRT, it would be so many steps above any other tool I've used for this.

Ian Anderson Gray

Being able to import a caption file (SRT) is really important. I think it's great that you can paste in the transcription into Descript, and Descript then syncs it with the audio or video. However, for music, songs and foreign languages this won't work. In my case I'm using Descript to edit videos that have songs in them, and I want to bring in caption files that have been created elsewhere.

Derek Lieu

+1 to this! I'd love to be able to adjust caption timing. There are no really good apps for adjusting timing and adding subtitles >_<

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