What's the difference between tracks and media_urls?

They point at the same participant recordings, just two shapes for two kinds of consumer. tracks is the rich version: an array of objects with the full detail for each recording (participant name, duration, the recording id, each track's file URL, and a synced URL when someone joined late). Reach for it when you want to label, organize, or make decisions per file.

media_urls is the convenience version: a flat array of just the files to grab, in the same order. It exists purely to make no-code automations easy, since tools like Zapier, Make, and n8n often can't pull a nested field out of an array of objects without a code or formatter step. It's also the authoritative “just grab these” list: for any track that needed time-aligning (a late joiner), media_urls already points at the synced version, so you never have to check synced_url yourself.

For example, in a Descript import step you can map its media field directly to media_urls and it'll pull in every participant track at once, with no formatter or code step needed. The combined backup is intentionally in neither, on combined_backup_url.