Voice-over enhancement

Hi all

I'm in the process of adding voice-over to a project, does anyone have any tips as to what i'd do to give the audio a fuller more 'sumptuous' feel?

I'm using FCP 5.2 and soundtrack pro

Good microphone, good recording environment and proper proximity and recording levels are tops. What you do to the sound afterwards is only secondary.


www.derekmok.com

Hi Derek

the audio was pre-recorded for me, so 'secondary' is all i've got to work with here . . . although i do know the voice was recorded on a high quality mic, in a living room

Use Soundtrack Pro. The audio tools in FCP is pants.. Living room? If it's the living rooms that I'm used to, it's going to sound quite noisy after compression.

Here's a guide on EQing voices:
[www.lafcpug.org]

For VOs, I tend to crank up the high ends (around 5khz), and if it's a male voice, the low mids as well (around 200hz). The idea is to shape the sound, which largely depends on what has been recorded.



www.strypesinpost.com

Hi James,

Since I make my living as a voice-over guy, I often get to hear the results of attempts to "sweeten" the voice-over delivery on not only my own work, but other VO performers as well. Here's what I'd recommend, based on my experience, working on hundreds (thousands?) of productions.

First, you need to make sure that you are able to "hear" the audio. By this, I mean that you need a "pretty good" listening environment - decent speakers, a good acoustic environment (not too echoey, not to dead, and not too much background noise).

Also, you need to be aware that many video and film people lack the audio experience necessary to make good judgements in regard to audio. You know how you can watch a video production done by a beginner, and say to yourself "How could they allow that to stay in the finished production? Can't they see how awful that is?". Well, I often listen to the audio tracks on completed productions, and say the same thing to myself. The answer is simple, -people who concentrate on the "picture" aspects of a production have their attention focused on the visual aspects, the sound is, (as it probably should be for a film and video editor) a secondary consideration.

To be fair, I do know some film and video people who seem to have an excellent "feel" for audio, and manage excellent audio work by themselves, but they are in the minority - and those who don't have this ability don't seem to know it.

This is why I always recommend taking your production to an "Audio Sweetening" professional. - You will work with someone whose focus is strictly audio - they will have the tools, skiils and experience to make your prodction "sparkle". Unlike the "picture" aspects of the production, working with audio is pretty fast. You can often lock the picture, then remix the audio, thereby greatly improving your production, for a very small fraction of your production's budget.

--end of part one--

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

--part two--

Now, if you're a student, or you have a budget of zero, or bringing in an audio expert is somehow impossible for you, attempting to do what you're doing can be an excellent learning experience.

First, you need to determine what needs to be "fixed" in your voiceover recording. Some living room environments can serve as excellent recording environments. Others...well....

So, you need to ask yourself "Is the recording too live" (too much echo)? Or was the environment too "dead" (Too much overstffed furniture.) Often, a recording environment will sound like there are no echoes, but it's only the high frequencies that are being absorbed by the furniture, etc., and we simply don't notice the low-frequency echoes. This produces a "muffled" sound. The "quick and dirty" fix for that is to reduce the frequencies at the lower end, and boost the highs.

A too "live" environment is probably beyond your ability to change.

If there's noise in the background, you can use expansion or gating and notch filters to reduce some of that. I haven't spent a lot of time with STPs noise reduction plugins, but they seem to work quite well.

Then, there are other aspects, -are you trying to fix the voiceover person's performance? If there's a lack of energy, a bit of audio level compression can sometimes work wonders, but, that's the opposite of expansion, so, yes the background noise can be increased.

There are many other things that can be done to enhance a voiceover performance -- for instance, you can cover up a great many deficiencies by using library music, but that is way beyond what can be covered in a forum posting.

Good luck

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

ive found recently that messing with the stereo spread filter in soundtrack can really pump some air into weasly audio

>ive found recently that messing with the stereo spread filter in soundtrack can really
>pump some air into weasly audio

I remember that plug-in from the days when Logic was still owned by emagic. That works by assigning alternate frequency bands to either side of the stereo spectrum. It's interesting when you're doing arpeggios, and you can even hear the notes shift between the left and right speakers.



www.strypesinpost.com