Voiceover / narration improvements through Vegas

cadu wrote on 2/23/2012, 7:34 PM

Hello,

I need to make by myself a voiceover / narration to a video. However, I don’t have a professional voice! Does anyone know if it is possible to make any improvements in voiceover / narration record through Vegas Pro 11? What would be the tools/treatments available?

Many thanks in advance,
Cadu

Comments

Dan Sherman wrote on 2/23/2012, 8:30 PM

In the audio FX select "Professional Voice".
Seriously, there's a LOT more to voice over work than a ballsy voice, if that's what you're after.

My experience is that it takes about three years of reading newscasts or commercials, or voice acting every day to begin to develop a style that will sound "professional."
There are rare exceptions of raw natural talent.
But voice quality is only one piece of the puzzle.
Good narration is not something you can dial up in post.
Hire a professional announcer.
That will put more polish on your project than almost anything else you can do.
And it might not cost as much as you think.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 2/23/2012, 8:40 PM

Here's some simple "at home" tutorials on doing VO's:

here

NickHope wrote on 2/23/2012, 10:10 PM

What mic you using?

I found a little compression made me sound a bit better:

PeterDuke wrote on 2/23/2012, 10:54 PM

Every now and then I watch a video tutorial on the web on how to do something or other, but I find the stumbling speech of the tutor to be very irritating. I wish they would just give a text rundown with a few diagrams and be done with it.

Richard Jones wrote on 2/24/2012, 7:22 AM

Happy Friar - the link you gave seems to be dead. Any alternatives please.

Richard

DavidMcKnight wrote on 2/24/2012, 11:24 AM

It starts with your voice. As suggested, practice. Practice, practice, practice.

Then, the recording chain - most importantly the mic. There's a reason buttery sounding tube mics cost big bucks. But, a couple hundred dollars can get you a decent mic from Rode and others.

Learn how proximity effect works, use pop filters if you need to, understand how the acoustics of your room/environment effect the reocrding, etc. DSE/Spot had a great tutorial on building a portable VO box.

Then - once you're in Vegas, a little compression, a little EQ, some Noise Reduction can help turn a B-quality VO into an A-quality VO. What Vegas cannot do is turn a D-quality VO into an A-quality VO.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 2/24/2012, 11:48 AM

Happy Friar - the link you gave seems to be dead. Any alternatives please

Just loads REALLY slow for me. I'll see if I can dig them up from somewhere else, they were decent.

rraud wrote on 2/24/2012, 12:42 PM

I bought Vegas because I thought it had JE Jones, Don LaFontaine, Peter Coyote or Liev Schreiber audio presets.. Were can I find them?

[r]Evolution wrote on 2/24/2012, 5:00 PM

I found a little compression made me sound a bit better:
Just not as good as the "Professional Voice" FX.

Crazy looking VO Tutorials site.

Anyone know of a Tutorial to show how to set Vegas up to Monitor yourself while Recording?
Or, how you do it for VO?
(hoping to use headphones & hear myself or VO artist +FX while recording)

Here's how I currently do it:

Richard Jones wrote on 2/25/2012, 4:51 AM

Thank you Happy Friar - I look forward to a better link as the one you gave is not only painfully slow to load but then shows that the relevant items are no longer in the archive. Technology can be so frustrating at times - normally :) but occasionally :(

Richard

cadu wrote on 2/25/2012, 2:04 PM

Thanks everybody for valuable information!