Why you should add a voiceover to your video using text to speech technology

While not all types of video need a voiceover to be effective, videos are much more eye-catching and successful when they use a narrator to describe a product or tell us a story.

The narration helps to reinforce the message that is being conveyed, acting as an additional layer that allows certain aspects of the product, service or message to be transmitted without having to create a visual representation for everything.

This is why we are taking full advantage of video’s multisensory qualities. The voiceover can explain concepts that would be very difficult to show exclusively with images. It also avoids a more extended video playtime and having to overload the screen with tons of text.

How to know if my video needs a voiceover?

To understand whether you should create a voiceover for your video, consider that:

Your client will often request a video with voiceover in one or several languages. In such cases, you won’t have much more to evaluate and should make a video that includes a voiceover.
If you are making an explainer video with a script containing lots of textual information, it’s a good idea to opt for voiceover. Otherwise, all of the texts will have to appear on the screen, and you won’t have much space for images. The end result would be unattractive and boring.
Finally, if you are creating an explainer video of a product or service, it is usually preferable that you use a spoken narration.

If you use a voiceover, remember that it is the first thing you should insert into your video when you start working on it.

Once your voiceover has been uploaded, you will have a clear idea of the duration of the video. You’ll also know when each concept will appear and how much time you’ll need in each scene for the story to unfold.

If you animate first without any clear reference points and later insert the voiceover, you will most likely have to spend more time correcting the elements’ timings to match the audio.

Can I afford a voiceover?

The incorporation of voiceover in a video has always had a significant impact on the final price, which is a concern for some customers.
However, we currently have many affordable tools and alternatives to obtain an equally professional result.

You can use the text to speech tool that we’ve developed with a Google API integration. This will allow you to write the text of your script and download an audio file with a voiceover that’s ready to go.

While the first automated text to speech engines were very robotic, today the text to speech technology has improved immensely, allowing you to obtain professional audios.

What are the steps for creating a text to speech voiceover?

Divide each part of the script into scenes to understand which parts of the voiceover will appear in each segment of the video.
Make a reference image for each scene’s portion of the text. At this point, you will be creating a Storyboard. You can use our storyboard creator if you need help creating one.
Copy and paste the text of your script into our text to speech tool and create a preview to make sure it sounds right. Choose from a wide range of languages, masculine and feminine voices, and even adjust the voice’s speed to fit your needs.
Download the voiceover as the mp3 file that you’ll use in your video.

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IMPORTANT: What should I keep in mind when making a script for a text to speech voiceover?

While text to speech technology has improved a lot and has some understanding of punctuation, you will see that the text gets read as it’s been typed.

At times this may result in slightly accelerated speech that doesn’t have the pauses or pronunciations we imagine.

Regardless of whether you create a voiceover using a text to speech tool or a voice actor, you always have to provide indications regarding pronunciation, pauses, and silences. You must do the same with the text to speech tool.

It’s a good idea to “exaggerate” some pauses if you want to have a little silence between one sentence or another, or if you wish to generate suspense before your brand name is mentioned.
You can do this just by adding paragraph breaks (enter)

Also, add paragraph breaks in between the fragments of the script that will be used for each scene.

Likewise, if you use words that aren’t as common, such as your company name, it’s likely that the text to speech tool won’t know exactly how to pronounce them.

In these cases, you can use accent marks (even if it’s not how you’d spell the word).
For example, to make sure that the text to speech engine pronounces “Wideo” correctly, you would need to put an accent on the “i” (Wídeo).

Luckily you can enter texts, make changes, and preview how they sound before exporting the final mp3 audio file.

Conclusion

We know that video is the best way to boost your business’ marketing and that there are no excuses for not using it. We have very easy-to-use tools (like Wideo) that do not require a big budget.

Similarly, a video that has a voice-over will produce a more significant effect on your business’ marketing strategy. It’s something that you can add for a low price, or even for free, thanks to Wideo’s text to speech tool.

Take advantage of the resources that technology has to offer today, and create high impact videos with real results.

Additionally, learn how to add subtitles to your video to double the impact of your animated video.

Is your business ready to discover the power of video? Try Wideo marketing video maker and create your own videos today.

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