Audio and Video Quality in SquadCast Recordings

This article covers the audio, video, and cloud backup specifications for recordings made in Descript Rooms and SquadCast. Both products capture a separate file from each participant's device and progressively upload it during the session.

This article covers:

Recording specs at a glance

  Rooms SquadCast
Audio    
Format MP4 (AAC)
WebM (Opus) in Firefox		 WAV or MP3
Sample rate 48 kHz 48 kHz
Lossless option WAV (Chromium only) WAV (PCM)
Video    
Max resolution 480p / 720p / 1080p / 4K 720p / 1080p / 4K
Frame rate Variable (up to 30 fps) Variable (up to 30 fps)
Target bitrate (4K) 30 Mbps 30 Mbps
Codec / container H.264 / MP4
VP8 / WebM in Firefox		 H.264 / MP4
Cloud backup    
Conference recording — MP4 (H.264, up to 1080p)
Isolated tracks WebM per participant (VP8 / Opus) WebM (VP8 / Opus)

Audio recording details

Each participant's audio is recorded as a separate file.

Lossless audio

Rooms and SquadCast support lossless audio recording, which produces a separate WAV file per participant alongside the default recording.

Rooms does not support MP3 as a recording format

To get a smaller audio file from a Rooms recording, export the project as MP3 from the Descript editor after your session.

Video recording details

Each participant's video is also recorded as a separate file. Codec and container format vary by browser — see the table above for details.

Recordings use a variable frame rate and bitrate. Your browser delivers the best quality it can based on your hardware and environment. Factors like system load or low lighting can cause the actual frame rate and bitrate to drop below the requested values.

Cloud backup quality

If something goes wrong with a recording, cloud backups ensure your files are still safely stored on the server.

Rooms cloud backups

Rooms captures individual cloud recordings per participant — one separate audio and video track per person, stored as WebM files (VP8 / Opus).

SquadCast cloud backups

SquadCast captures two types of cloud backups:

  • Conference recordings: One combined audio/video file (MP4, H.264) with video up to 1920×1080 at 30 fps.
  • Isolated track recordings: One audio and video file per participant (.webm) encoded in VP8 (video) and Opus (audio). Resolution, frame rate, and bitrate depend on each participant's webcam and network quality — a poor connection will cause backups to scale down to stay in real time.

What affects recording quality

Recording quality depends on factors outside of Descript — your output is only as good as your input.

  • Lighting. If the room is dimly lit, your camera has to keep the shutter open longer to get the same picture quality, which slows the frame rate. Keeping the room well lit makes the camera work less and keeps the frame rate high.
  • Camera and microphone hardware. Your camera determines the maximum resolution available in the recording quality picker. For microphones, wired connections deliver the most reliable audio quality. Bluetooth devices like AirPods can introduce latency and reduce audio fidelity.
  • Network connection (cloud backups). A slow or unstable connection can cause cloud backups to scale down resolution, frame rate, and bitrate. It can also make primary recording uploads take longer after the session, though the recording quality itself isn't affected.
  • Browser. Rooms runs in the browser. For the best recording quality and access to all features (including lossless audio), use an up-to-date Chromium-based browser like Chrome, Edge, or Arc. Firefox is supported but records in WebM.
  • System resources. Running many applications alongside a recording session can affect performance and quality.