Record Your Own Voiceover

Guestblogger, Sander is a professional voiceover artist. Every working day, you’ll find him sitting behind his microphone in his booth at home, recording voice overs for everything from web videos to commercials – including Bax Music ads. In fact, Sander has been the ‘voice’ of Bax Music for ten years already. In this blog, he shares his trade secrets when it comes to recording the perfect voiceover.

The Age of Big Studios is Over

Because of the fast progression of modern technology, it’s become much easier to just record voice overs yourself. You don’t even need that much gear to do it. In fact, you could even make a good start with nothing more than a smartphone and a computer. In this blog, I’ll show you how easy it can be to produce your own voice overs.

The Voiceover Essentials

A quiet room with good acoustics. So not a room with echoing walls or a space where you can hear other noises, like the neighbours or street noise.
A laptop or a computer
A smartphone
The video that you want to add your voiceover to
You might want to add an external microphone to that list, especially if you want better sound quality (more on that later)

Not too bad, eh?

Preparation

Make sure that the video you’re making a voiceover for is on your computer. If you made the video on your smartphone, then you can just send it to your computer and save it. If you want, you can also practise by downloading a short clip from the internet.
Playback the video and record your voiceover on your smartphone. Every modern smartphone will have a voice recording app you can use. If yours doesn’t, then you’ll find plenty of free apps available in the App Store (iPhone) or Play Store (Anroid). Of course, you can also play the video back on your phone and record on your computer. Or playback and record on your computer at the same time, whatever works for you.
Make sure that you have a way of transferring the file from your smartphone to your computer. An easy way to do this is to just email it to yourself.
Download some appropriate software. I recommend Openshot. It’s a useful programme for beginners, is really user friendly and is even free. You can download a version for Windows, Mac or Linux here.

Getting to Work: Adding Your Voiceover to Your Video

Everything sorted? Now we can get to work. I’ll explain how it’s done in four simple steps:

The OpenShot software is pretty self-explanatory. Follow the instructions and open the program. Then, you’ll see a window filled with five tracks. You’re going to use two of them: one for the video and one for the voiceover.
Now, you need to add your video and audio files. To do this, simply click the green ‘+’ at the top of the window or click on the box marked ‘Project Files’. It doesn’t matter which.
Now, you can drag and drop your video file onto one track and your audio file onto another track. If you recorded your voiceover in sections, then simply place each section (file) on the track, one after the other, making sure they’re in the right order. You can drag the audio to the left or right along the track to synchronise it with the video.
As soon as everything is matched up with your video and you’ve completed the project, you can click on the button ‘Export’ (not ‘Save As’. This just saves the project so that you can edit or work on it later).

Some Professional Voiceover Tips

Before recording a voiceover, always make sure that your voice is in full health. If you have a bit of a cold or pushed it a bit too far last night, then your voice is unlikely to sound as good as it does when you’re fully fresh and ready for action.
When speaking into the microphone, make sure you’re sitting up straight.
If you’re reading quite a long script, then break it up into portions. This will make it much easier to perform. Later, you can merge all of the takes together into one complete take.
Pay close attention to your articulation and try to exaggerate things a little. A voiceover never sounds like someone speaking normally. It can be a good idea to make some notes on your script, marking where to stress and emphasise certain words.
Don’t give up! Remember that practice makes perfect!

A Better Microphone?

It might be that you’re less than impressed with the sound quality of your voiceover and would prefer your voice to sound more full, round and sparkling – like you hear on the radio. Of course, radio presenters work in professional studios filled with expensive audio and recording equipment, but even on a small budget, you can really boost and professionalise the audio quality of your voiceovers by picking out the right microphone. Have a look through our Buyer’s Guides and see what might work best for you:

Smartphones/tablets: What’s the Best Android or iOS Microphone for Me?
Windows/Mac computers: Whats’ the Best USB-Microphone for Me?