Once you have opened your Room, setting it up is simple, and joining is just as easy. This page walks you through getting a Room ready, and what you’ll see when you join so you know exactly what to expect when it’s time to start recording.

Choosing your settings and devices

In the Room window, you will find several configuration options to get your recording environment just right:

• Camera Settings: Choose your camera from the available options or click the icon to hide your video feed.
  

• Microphone Settings: Choose your preferred microphone. Clear audio is crucial, so pick a high-quality mic. If you want to join a Room muted, simply click the microphone icon.
  

• Playback Device and Audio Cancellation: Select your playback device to hear others in the room. Be sure to let us know if you are using speakers or headphones. This helps avoid crosstalk and mic bleed, ensuring a clean recording.
  

  We recommend that all participants wear headphones while recording in Rooms to prevent other participants' voices from echoing or feeding back from their speakers into their microphones. Wearing headphones prevents echoing and feedback in most cases and helps ensure that you'll have a high-quality recording from your session.

• Participant Name: Enter the name you will use within the room. Make sure it's recognizable to other participants. Descript will also use this to apply speaker labels to your project after recording automatically.
  

• Back to Descript (Hosts Only): If you are not ready to start a Room fully, you can always go back to Descript by clicking Back to Descript at the top left. Once you have finished recording, you will be taken back to the Descript project that was created for the Room.
  

• Support: In the top right, when you click the question mark ( ? ), you can quickly access our help center, submit feature requests, view what's new, and see what version of Rooms you are using. You can also find a Download debug data option. The debug option will download a JSON file you can later provide to our team to help troubleshoot issues that might arise when using Rooms. 
  
  

Once you have everything to your liking, you are all set and ready to go! Click Join to enter the Room. For more details on inviting others or managing a Room, see Managing and inviting participants to a Descript Room.

Additional options

You can access even more options on this page by clicking your profile image at the top right. Here, you can access additional settings by clicking Settings or log out of Descript. You will also be able to access this menu after entering a Room if you need to change a setting later.

Settings

When you access your settings, a pop-up window will appear where you can adjust them. Your choices here will be retained in your browser's cache. If you were to delete or reset your browser's cache, your settings would return to the defaults.

• General: Here, you can adjust your theme (light or dark). How and when chat notifications appear (When chat is closed, always, or never), as well as your default emoji skin tone.
  

• Audio: In the audio tab, you will find a few options that will help you ensure you have the best in-class audio when recording.

  • Echo cancelation: This will help cut out any possible crosstalk. We recommend only turning it on if you are not using headphones. 
  • Background noise reduction: This setting, turned on by default, will help cancel out background noises you might have while recording. Remember, you can also apply Studio Sound afterward to your project.
  • Recording and Room call quality: This will show you details about your Room's recording quality. We hope to allow users to adjust this in the future, but as of now, Rooms will be set to record the highest quality possible. This means that for recordings, we will attempt to record up to a maximum of 48KHz and playback the best call quality your network can provide while in the Room.

• Video: The video tab gives you more finite control over your video settings. 
  

  • Camera: These camera settings allow you to adjust your experience in Descript. These settings will not alter how others see you, and they will not affect the final recording.

    • Aspect ratio: In a call, you can adjust your view of the participants to a 1:1 aspect ratio or a 16:9, depending on your preference.
      
    • Fame up your shot: If you want to ensure you are centered or better frame up your shot, you can turn on a grid or a silhouette overlay to help center yourself. As always, you can also choose to have no overlay. 
      

  • Recording quality: This will show details about your Room's recording quality. We hope to allow users to adjust this in the future, but as of now, Rooms will be set to record the highest quality possible. This means that for recordings, we will attempt to record a maximum of 4K. 

    Not all cameras support this resolution; in this situation, we will use your camera's highest supported resolution.

  • Room call quality: Your call quality refers to how you look and sound in the Room. If your internet leaves more to be desired and you run into issues, you can adjust your Room's call quality. This will not affect your recording quality but might affect how others see you in the Room. We offer a few options:

    • Auto (Recommended): Rooms will do it's best to show the highest call quality and will adjust based on your network connection in realtime.

    • High quality: Regardless of bandwidth, Rooms will attempt to show the highest quality video possible to everyone in the Room. You and your participants may have a subpar viewing experience and slower upload times in poor network conditions. This, however, will not affect the quality of your recordings.

    • Low quality: Best for slow connections, your video will be lower resolution and may even appear pixilated to those in the Room. Again, this will not affect your recorded video.

    • Bandwidth saver: Your video will be turned off to help save bandwidth and to help ensure you have enough bandwidth for the recording. This is best for those using mobile networks or users experiencing poor connection quality. Keep in mind that turning off your camera with this setting will also turn off your camera for the recorded content.