1. Descript
  2. The Descript Editor
  3. Speaker Labels

Speaker Labels

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Dan Reyes-Cairo

Descript makes it easy to automatically or manually add speaker labels to your transcripts.

Descript's speaker labels are smart; once you add them to a transcript, they'll follow your content along as you cut/copy/paste into different Compositions and Projects.

 

Automatically adding speaker labels to your transcript

To automatically identify speakers and add labels to a transcript, check out our article on Speaker Detective which provides steps during the transcription process, or initiating Speaker Detective after-the-fact.

 

Manually adding speaker labels

To add a speaker label, click on the field to the left of each paragraph and type the speaker's name or type a new name to add it to your list of speakers.

 

Changing speaker labels

If you would like to change a speaker label, you can click on the label of the speaker then either:

  • Click on the new label in the dropdown list if you want to change all of the paragraphs in that speakers group, or
  • Hold Shift and then click the new speakers name if you want to change only the single paragraph you've selected.

You can also change the default behavior between these two options by clicking the Set Speaker toggle in the speaker label dropdown.

Set-speaker-label-changes.gif

 

Adjusting label boundaries

To move a speaker boundary a few words in either direction, simply drag and drop the label to the correct boundary.

Please note that only the first label in a given speaker label group can be moved. You can tell which labels are able to be moved because:
  1. They do not disappear when your mouse isn't hovering over them
  2. A little 6-dot grabber icon will become visible on the right side of the name when you are hovering over them (as shown above)

 

Creating a line break in the middle of a paragraph

With your cursor at a speaker break, press Command + R to add a line break and change the speaker.

 

Editing Speaker Labels

Want to add, delete, or merge multiple speaker labels at once? Head to the Edit speakers menu (available via the @ panel or by clicking on any existing speaker label).

You can also rename speakers in this menu by simply clicking on a name and editing it as desired — your changes will be applied to all instances of that speaker label.