Supper Club × How Descript Built A Next Gen Video Editor In The Browser With Andrew Lisowski

In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Andrew Lisowski about working on Descript, web streams vs local storage, using state machines, writing CSS with Radix, monorepos, and more.
Show Notes 00:35 Welcome
01:07 What is Descript?
Descript | All-in-one video & podcast editing, easy as a doc.

Work — Sandwich

02:21 Who is Andrew Lisowski?
Andrew Lisowski (@HipsterSmoothie) / X

hipstersmoothie.com

Descript (@DescriptApp) / X

devtools.fm

04:51 How does Descript interact with the webcam?
08:52 Web streams vs local first
Web Streams Explained — Syntax Podcast 587

10:06 How are you exporting video?
GitHub - Yahweasel/libav.js: This is a compilation of the libraries associated with handling audio and video in ffmpeg—libavformat, libavcodec, libavfilter, libavutil, libswresample, and libswscale—for emscripten, and thus the web.

Riverside.fm - Record Podcasts And Videos From Anywhere

14:40 How does Descript deal with recording fails?
17:17 How does Descript design and build the UI?
19:37 What did you like about state machines?
XState - JavaScript State Machines and Statecharts

24:12 How are you writing your CSS with Radix?
Themes – Radix UI

Home | Open UI

30:30 How does the marketing site’s tech stack compare?
31:44 Playwright vs Cypress
Fast and reliable end-to-end testing for modern web apps | Playwright

JavaScript Component Testing and E2E Testing Framework | Cypress

36:26 What tech do you use for monorepos?
37:01 What’s your build tool?
Workspaces | Yarn - Package Manager

Turbo

webpack

40:18 Moving to the web means moving things to the backend
41:37 Descript focuses AI tools on helping creators
Eye Contact: AI Video Effect | Descript

50:50 Supper Club questions
Topre Switch Mechanical Keyboards

REALFORCE | Premium Keyboard, PBT, Capacitive Key Switch

Iosevka

Github Dark High Contrast - Visual Studio Marketplace

56:21 SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××
××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Lexical

shadcn/ui

Shameless Plugs devtools.fm

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Scott’s Twitter

Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets
Wes Bos on Bluesky

Scott on Bluesky

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