A short Descript tutorial showing five practical tips for beginners: (1) zoom the timeline with Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) + mouse/trackpad scroll; (2) scroll left/right by holding Shift + scroll; (3) move one frame at a time with the left/right arrow keys (hold for continuous play/rewind); (4) toggle the canvas (preview) full screen with Command/Control + period or the canvas button; and (5) change playback speed via a clock icon (settings from 0.5x up to 3x, including 0.75x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 2x). The video is a step-by-step on-screen demo aimed at beginners who want to speed up editing and navigation in Descript.
Questions this video answers
Hold Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) and scroll (mouse wheel) or two-finger scroll (trackpad).
Click in the timeline, hold Shift, then scroll up to move left and scroll down to move right (mouse wheel or two-finger trackpad).
Use the right arrow key to move forward one frame and the left arrow key to move back one frame; hold an arrow to play continuously in that direction.
Command + . (Mac) or Control + . (Windows); there is also a canvas button in the top-right to toggle full screen.
Playback speeds shown: 0.5x, 0.75x, 1x (default), 1.25x, 1.5x, 2x, up to a maximum of 3x.
Back with another descript tutorial today. Five tips to Using descript Better Tip number one is zooming in and out on the timeline using your mouse to use your mouse to zoom in and out, put your cursor over the timeline like this. Click in there and then on your keyboard, hold the Command key on Mac or Control key on Windows, and while holding it, scroll up on your mouse wheel to zoom in. Or while still holding it holding the key, scroll down on your mouse wheel to zoom out. And if you're using a trackpad on your laptop instead of a scroll wheel, you'll use your two fingers while holding Command or control to zoom in and out. Tip number two scroll left and right in your timeline using your mouse to use your mouse to scroll left and right in your timeline, put your cursor once again in the timeline. Click somewhere in there. Now hold Shift on your keyboard and this is for Windows and Mac. Hold Shift and while holding Shift, scroll up on your mouse to navigate to the left, which is towards the beginning of your composition, and in this case I've already reached the very beginning. Or once again, still holding Shift, scroll down on your mouse to navigate to the right of your composition or towards the end of your composition. As with the zooming functions, this works with a trackpad on a laptop as well, but as before, you'll use two fingers scrolling up and down to navigate left and right. Tip number three is to move through your video one frame at a time. To move forward or backward through your video just one frame at a time, you can use the forward and backward buttons on your keyboard. For example, if I'm trying to find a perfect place to cut this video of Elvis, I I can find a spot near where I want to make the cut and I can use the right key right key to tap forward one frame at a time. If I need to go backwards, I can use the left key, the left key to move back one frame at a time. And I can hold the arrows, hold the right arrow to play forward continuously, or the left arrow to rewind, like so. Tip number four is to make your canvas full screen. Your canvas is your preview window right here. This is showing you your project at the frame where this blue playhead is this blue vertical line on the timeline. To make it full screen, you can Press command on Mac period to toggle on Full Screen or on Windows Control + period, and this makes it expand to fill your entire descript window. If you press it again command + period, it shrinks it back down. You can also do this by clicking this button right here in the top right of your canvas. Make it full screen and once again to shrink it. Our fifth and final tip is to change your playback speed. By default, your video plays back at normal speed, also known as 1x plays at one times the normal speed. But you can play faster by clicking on this little clock icon right here. And when you click it you get this drop down and you can bump up the speed to 1.25x 1.5x all the way up to 3x is the max. Select one, let's do 2x and hit play. And now it plays back at double time. This could be useful for playing back your project quickly after you've made all your edits and you just want to give everything a once over before you publish your project. Alternatively, you can go back to the speed setting this clock icon contact. You can return it to 1x to play at normal speed. Or you can drop below 1x and play it at 0.75 or even half speed. And this would play it in slow motion. Let's see how that looks. Let me just come back a little bit. And there is slow motion. So there you go. Five tips to Use Descript Better.
