Descript Eye Contact: Price, Limits and a Cheaper Alternative

Descript’s help center lists the usual causes. More than one person in the frame: the effect is made for single-person footage. Variable frame rate video, which phones and screen recorders often produce: re-encode it to a constant frame rate and import it again. Sideways footage, or no network connection while the effect processes. And when the speaker looks far away, turns their head or moves out of frame, Descript leaves that section uncorrected on purpose.

If you can’t apply it at all, check your plan: Eye Contact sits on Hobbyist and above, and it draws on the same monthly AI credits as Underlord and Studio Sound.

If you already edit in Descript, its Eye Contact is the easy option: it is applied to the layer in your project, so there is no export and re-import. Podcasters and long-form YouTubers who use Descript for transcript editing, Studio Sound and Underlord get eye contact as one more effect on a plan they already pay for.

If you don’t edit in Descript, a subscription and a desktop editor are a lot to take on for one effect. StoryCut corrects the file itself: upload the recording, download a corrected MP4 with the same resolution, frame rate, length and audio, and use it anywhere. You pay per video ($1.80 each in the pack) instead of per month, and credits don’t expire.

It also works if you do use Descript. Correct the raw recording in StoryCut first, then start your Descript project from the corrected file: your transcript, cuts and Studio Sound are built on footage that already looks into the lens, and your AI credits go to other tools.