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The Properties panel shows settings for whatever you’ve selected — a scene, a layer, or a clip. With a scene selected, that’s the scene’s layout, background, effects, and more.
New to scenes?Scenes are the building blocks of your video. If you’re not familiar with how scenes work in Descript, check out the Scenes overview guide first.
Numbered diagram of scene-level properties shown in the Properties panel Each scene includes the following editable properties:
  1. Choose layout pack: Apply a layout pack and a specific layout to the current scene.
  2. Duration: The scene’s length, based on its boundaries.
  3. Background: Set the base color for the scene.
  4. Effects: Add visual or audio effects that apply to all visuals within the scene.
  5. Transitions: Add scene transitions between visual moments.
  6. Layers: View and manage layers in the scene. Their order reflects how they stack visually.
Applying a change to all scenesWhen editing a layer that appears in multiple scenes, you’ll see a toggle to apply your changes to either all scenes or just the current one. Learn more about the “Apply to all scenes” feature.