Digital Photography Hacks

Voiceovers for That Professional Touch

A picture is worth a thousand words. But sometimes, you need 1,020 words to communicate what’s going on. That’s when it’s time to step up to the mic and create a voiceover track.

A voiceover is simply an additional audio track for your digital slideshow or movie, in which the narrator speaks directly to the audience. If you’ve ever watched a nature show on public television, you know what a voiceover is.

Creating the Voiceover

Voiceovers can add a professional touch to your presentations and, believe it or not, they’re not that difficult to create. The first step is to find a way to record your monologue. One route is to use digital recording software for your computer. All you do is talk into your computer’s microphone, and the software records your voice and saves it to the hard drive as an audio file.

You don’t have to spend much money for this software. For Windows, take a look at Easy Recorder (http://www.sell-shareware.com/easyrecorder/). I like QuickVoice (http://www.quick-voice.com/quickvoice/) for Mac OS X users. Each application sells for US$20. Save the files in either QuickTime or MP3 format, which will enable you to assemble the presentation in QuickTime Pro [Hack #59] .

You can also use a standalone voice recorder, which I like a little better, actually. I have the best luck creating accurate voiceovers that synchronize with the presentation when I can play the slideshow or movie on the computer (with the audio turned off) and ...