Hello, Cristi here.
In this video, I want to show you how you can add gaps in-between sentences in Descript
when you're using Overdub.
And this is one question that I saw in the Descript Facebook group, and I thought it
was a great idea for a video, and while this is a workaround, it is possible to do that,
and it really depends on how long your project or your composition is and how long are the
sequences of text you want to separate.
So when you generate voice text with your Overdub voice, by the way, you can only do
this.
If you have the pro version, the Creator version of Descript, that Creator subscription, doesn't
allow you to generate any sentences you want, it just has a list of 1,001 predefined words,
but you probably already know that if you came to watch this video anyway.
So in the Pro subscription, you can generate any text you like using the Overdub voice
that you have activated, you created in Descript.
So the problem here is that when you generate the Overdub sentences or phrases, they are
naturally close together and they flow naturally with speech, but You may want to have longer
gaps between the sentences.
So Descript doesn't have any functionality, as far as I know, that targets sentence-level
changes or replacements or actions.
It only does word-level things.
So you can do a search and replace for words, you can do a bunch of shortening of gaps,
all of them around words.
There's nothing to say, here's a sentence, separate it from the next one.
So how can we add gaps between sentences in a sort of semi-automated way?
So let's have a look.
I have a few phrases here, so I have a blank project in Descript, and I'm going to generate
a few sentences using my Overdub voice.
So I have them typed in here, so you don't spend a lot of time watching me.
I have five or six sentences and I'm going to paste them into Descript in this script
in here.
And you notice I've already selected my voice.
I have my speaker label in here and my voice is using the default style, not the normal
style.
You can define voice styles, but I'm just going to use the default style for now.
So all I do is just paste these phrases in here.
And in a few seconds, Descript is going to create the Overdub voice for them.
So while it's doing that, I just wanted to explain that if you notice, down here in the
timeline, every one of the sentences has its own file if you want.
So Descript is now generating these audio files and they are for each sentence, they
are a separate one.
So as you can see now it's creating these and you can notice that every sentence is
its own segment in here.
So that is very useful for us in this scenario.
So now that the overdub text has been created, let's listen to it.
I'm going to go to the start and play it.
This is the first sentence in the text.
This is the second sentence.
The third sentence is here.
I keep typing sentences.
They are fairly short.
Descript is fantastic.
And the Overdub functionality is great.
This is the last sentence.
So as you can see, these go quite close together all of the sentences.
So I would like to add some gaps.
Now, here's the way to do this.
Of course, it's a bit of a manual process, so if you have a very long script that you're
generating Overdub for this may not be practical for you, but this is one way to do it.
When you drag the sentences apart, Descript is going to add a gap clip between them.
So you can obviously go here and drag them like this.
But what I recommend you do is, you drag them apart more than a second.
So one second, one second and a half, don't worry about the exact length of the gap, because
we will shorten it.
So just separate your sentences like this.
So you notice that now all of these gap clips that Descript created in-between my sentences,
show the duration here.
So now all I have to do is just go here to the top, the wrench icon, and say Shorten
word gaps.
And this is going to find any word gaps longer than a second.
Of course you can adjust this here, a second and a half or whatever.
So like I said, make these gaps longer than a second, so you can target them like this
with the search.
So I'm going to just say, any gaps longer than one second, I'm going to shorten them
to one second.
So you can see them already.
It's found them down here on the left.
You can click on each one of them and listen to it.
But what we want to do is Apply to all.
And watch this.
Now all of the gaps are one second long.
So now if I play again, this is the first sentence in the text.
This is the second sentence.
The third sentence is here.
And so on.
So now these gaps have exactly between my sentences, they're all one second.
And notice that it says 0.85.
I haven't actually shortened the gaps themselves, that I added, the gap clips.
Descript calculates the distance between the words.
So in this case, of course my gap clip ended up being 0.85 seconds, but then you see there's
a bit of silence on the left and a bit of silence on the right.
So the total gap is now 1 second.
So this is how you do it.
And of course, if you go ahead and create a new sentence, like I'm doing here, look,
I'm going to add a new sentence.
And of course I need to wait for a second for it to generate the Overdub sentence.
And now if you look down here, there is obviously no gap between these two sentences, the one
before and the one after not a problem, I'll just drag this apart more than than a second.
You notice it showing up in here, click apply all.
And now everything is back to one second throughout my entire composition.
So this is the solution for adding gaps between sentences, with Overdub in Descript.
And of course, if you want to manipulate these individually and space things out, in terms
of the words, you can't space the words out using an Overdub, you have to convert your
Overdub to waveforms.
In that moment, they become actual audio waveforms as if you had recorded them with your microphone,
so then you can do other things.
So if you want, you can just select everything and you can say, Overdub, Convert Overdub
to normal audio.
And when you do that, every single sentence becomes an audio file and you will see them
in here on the left.
Here they are, all of the individual sentences, and now you can actually edit them, just like
any other piece of audio, every word you can do it like that.
And once you do that, once all of the sentences are audio, you can't make changes to them
with the Overdub voice, but you can now change and drag words apart if you want to.
So that's one thing, but it means that you can't go back to editing that sentence with
Overdub.
So if you need to regenerate that sentence, you have to rerecord it or generate it again
with Overdub.
So I hope this was helpful.
Thank you for watching.
If you enjoy these tutorials, feel free to subscribe to my channel.
I will have many more Descript tutorials coming out in the next few weeks, next few months.
And if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments and I will see
you on the next one.