Yesterday at Information Development World I presented “Perfecting the audio narration in instructional video.” Here are my slides and recording.

Length: 50 min.

Download MP3 (right-click and select Save As)

PowerPoint in other format: pptx | zip

Also, I know I posted it earlier, but here’s the description of my presentation.

No matter what tool you use to create video tutorials, getting the voice right — sounding professional, clear, and friendly — is an art. You have to know to interact with your microphone, how to read your script sounding natural and at ease (often while driving the mouse), how to post-process your audio track without ending up with choppy background shifts, how to sync your voice with the timing of the video actions, and more.

In this session, you’ll learn several fundamental techniques that can make your voice sound pleasing for users to listen to. By enunciating your words (opening your mouth wider), varying your pitch, reading ahead to know where the content is going, and understanding how to efficiently post-process your audio, you can transform what might be an otherwise weak voice into one that is clear, easy to understand, and professional. You’ll also learn about different microphones and recording setups that work well for creating instructional videos.

In the audio file, I swapped in the actual audio files of the clips I played. I also dropped in the full audio clips, so they’re a bit longer than the length I actually played in the presentation. Also, I tried to even out the audio so that the clips and my voice are relatively the same level.

Additionally, the questions and comments from the audience weren’t loud enough to hear, so I cut those out. As a result, you may hear some jumps where it’s obvious I skipped something.

If you just look at the slides in the Slideshare embed, you won’t be able to hear the audio clips. You will need to download the PowerPoint format of the slides to hear them.

Here’s a youtube video of Adam Helwah interviewing Irene Koehler about my session.

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