Riverside

What it is

Riverside records remote interviews and podcasts by capturing each participant locally at full quality, then uploading the files, rather than recording the compressed video call.

That distinction is the entire product. A guest with a poor connection produces a poor call and a clean recording, which is not true of any conferencing tool.

It has added editing, transcription and clip generation, and the recording quality remains the reason to use it.

What it does

Local recording at up to 4K video and uncompressed audio per participant, uploaded progressively during the session.

Separate tracks per participant, which means you can fix one person's audio without affecting anybody else's.

Transcription and text-based editing, less refined than Descript's but adequate for straightforward cuts.

Clip generation produces vertical social clips with captions, which turns each interview into several pieces of content.

Who it's for

Features

Pros and cons

Pricing

Priced by recording hours and features per tier. Compare against how many interviews you record monthly.

Alternatives

My verdict

Riverside solves the one problem that ruins remote recordings: the connection. Recording locally at full quality means a guest on poor broadband still sounds and looks fine in the finished piece.

I learned this the expensive way, losing an interview to a call that degraded halfway through. Anybody who has done that once will pay for this without argument.

Edit elsewhere if editing matters to you. Descript is better at that, and Riverside is better at the recording, and using both is a reasonable arrangement.

Who should use it

Who should avoid it

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