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Up until this fall, my company had been doing silent videos with callout
bubbles to point out certain areas of the screen. We recently decided to
take the plunge and add voice-over text. For our most recent videos, I did
the following:
1. I wrote a script.
2. I put together a storyboard with the script and screen shots and sent
it to stakeholders for review.
3. I used Audacity to record the voice-over text. I tried to record it
at the same pace that I'd be walking through the steps when recording the
video. Later, I found out that in a few places, I talked through the steps
faster than I could show them in the video. I adjusted those sections later
when editing the audio and video together.
4. I used Camtasia to record the video in which I walked through the
steps I wanted to show.
5. I imported the audio into Camtasia.
6. In Camtasia, I edited the audio and video tracks so they were in sync.
It is possible to use Camtasia to record audio. However, after reading a
few how-to articles about Audacity, I thought it would produce a
higher-quality audio track. Audacity has tools for editing out room noise
and so on. My audio-editing process involved normalizing the sound,
equalizing it, amplifying it slightly, adding a little more bass, removing
room noise, and making the pitch slightly lower. Your process might be
slightly different, depending on the sound you're looking for.
I used a $30 Logitech microphone and recorded the voice-over in my kitchen.
Using Audacity's tool for removing noise, it was easy to get rid of the
sound of the refrigerator motor, among other things. Fortunately, my dog
slept through my recording sessions. Timing is everything. ;)
A couple of tips:
- Practice the script a few times before you record the audio.
- As another poster mentioned, if you make a mistake while recording
audio, don't stop recording. Clap (or make some other loud sound) when you
make the mistake. Later, when you edit the audio track, the waves will be
higher in the place where you clapped, making it easier to see which part
of the audio you need to edit.
Cheryl
On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 7:02 AM, Erika Yanovich <ERIKA_y -at- rad -dot- com> wrote:
> We've been doing short training videos to demonstrate how to perform a
> task or to explain how something works. My initial idea was to keep them
> simple, with text-to-speech, so that tech writers can make them themselves.
> I was quite happy with the results until I was told that while the videos
> give value to users they convey a message about our company being cheap.
> How can I make them more polished beyond using professional voices and
> better graphics? What makes a video polished?
> TIA
> Erika
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