Working with Voiceovers in Vyond Studio

To bring familiarity and personality to your story, you may want to reconsider using one of our HQ neural voices on your Vyond video projects.

Instead, recording and working with voiceover on Vyond Studio can be beneficial as you can ensure your story is told with the emotion and inflection you envisioned.

But before you can start spinning a yarn, you need to ensure that your script is voice-over ready.

Creating a voiceover-ready script

Scripts exist to help stories and messages cross from one medium to another. But what works for a live-action video script won’t necessarily work for a voice-over script. Voice-over scripts need to emphasize a narrative above all else, so it’s important that you take the appropriate steps to make your script voice-over-ready.

Annotate your script

Aside from speaking clearly and sporadically hydrating your throat with water (or, better yet, apple juice), make sure your script actively reminds you of the things you need to convey when recording. Annotations can help you do just this:

• If there are things you want to emphasize when recording, bold or italicize the text there.
• If you’d like to add a pause, add a few dashes—or simply make a note of it in the text, e.g., (pause here).
• Use transition words, such as however, therefore, and meanwhile to convey a change in idea or scene.
• Keep your timing in check by following the 75 words per minute rule. This is slower than conversational speed, allowing viewers to fully digest the information as it’s being presented.

If anyone else will be looking at your script or filling in for you at any point, be sure they understand what your annotations mean.

Break your audio into workable fragments

Whether you record your own audio or hire a voice actor, segment your script into shorter lines and scenes that correspond with your visuals. When editing a video, Vyond can help you upload a single voiceover file that can later be split with ease. Have in mind that breaking up your audio may prove to be beneficial if there are multiple dialogues from different people happening within a scene.

This easy trick also allows you to have better control over your transitions, edits, and final product. Plus, it takes less time to upload and process smaller MP3 files.

Be mindful of character actions

Conversations that are true to life would not lack movement, gesturing, or other visual representations of what you’re saying, would they? 

Try to avoid making your video feel stiff and/or overly formal by assigning your characters some actions and emotions. 

However, If a piece of dialogue is very long, the character will continue performing the action you have selected and the scene would appear robotic and unnatural. (Cue exit.) For this reason, consider either splitting your voiceover audio or creating a new scene so that you can give the character a new action or you can change the camera angles. Both are good options to keep your video dynamic, meaning visually and audibly engaging for the viewer.

Something to note: In dialogue-based videos—versus voice-over/narration-based videos—The scene length is not responsive to audio track length and therefore doesn’t default to a single line of dialogue.

Name your files accordingly

When it’s time to upload, you don’t want to get lost in a sea of unnamed recordings. Use file names that make it clear what each recording contains for maximum upload ease. Also, make sure your audio files are in MP3, WAV, or M4A format.

Need help uploading? Here’s a handy video walk-through.

3 tips to help you record the best audio for your Vyond animation

There’s a golden rule of audio recording: test, test, and test. Few things are worse than recording an entire script before realizing something wasn’t set up properly. Run a few test lines, and listen back before recording for extended periods.

But beyond testing your recordings over and over, there are a few additional best practices that can help you create like a total pro.

Reduce wind

Wind is one of the most common audio disrupters, even if it’s not audible to the naked ear. (This includes the wind coming out of your mouth when speaking.) For this reason—and many others—it’s worth investing in a proper external mic, plus a pop filter or windscreen.

A pop filter helps avoid the harsh “popping” wind that comes from P and B sounds, and a windscreen helps fend off any other wind sounds in your environment.

There are three types of windscreens you can use to improve sound quality: foam, windsock, and basket. A foam windscreen is a bare minimum, but it’ll do just fine for indoor recording. For outdoor recording, a furry windsock (aka “windjammer” or “dead cat”) or a net-like basket (aka “blimp”) will be a better solution.

Add sound cues

Since you’re planning to sync your audio with animations, it can be helpful to add sound cues when recording. These should be short and loud, like a clap or a beep tone.

In this case, you’d add a sound cue at the start of each scene in your audio recordings so you know exactly when to sync that audio with an action in the editing phase.

Record ambient sound

Lastly, record 10–15 seconds of ambient sound or “room tone.” Ambient sound is the natural sound that happens when no one’s talking, and it can be used to fill the empty space between scenes or when you run out of audio. You can also use it to smooth out pops, clicks, or other unwanted noise.

Also, don’t forget to add closed captions. Adding captions to your Vyond video can be a big deal, especially for synchronized media, which simply means a video with accompanying audio. To make your video accessible to both hearing and visually impaired viewers, you’ll need to add audio and closed captions in a separate text file. 

Vyond enables you to create professional animation with little design knowledge. With the information above, you can create audio to go with your dynamic and functional animation, resulting in the complete package.

The sound of success

The best videos put quality first, and adding audio is no exception. Bring quality into focus by investing in the right equipment and software, being mindful of your scenes and their corresponding animations when scripting and recording, and uploading your (clearly named) recordings into Vyond scene by scene.

With lots of options for customizing your perfect visual-to-audio ratio, we’ve made it easy to create and deliver an exceptional audio experience, regardless of experience.

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