I’ve been doing my own voiceover for a series of Captivate software demonstrations I’m building. I write a script, record the demo without any audio, and then tweak the script as needed based on what I recorded. Using a free program called Audacity that I found on the Web, I record the voiceover to my computer in separate pieces, manipulate the tracks, and export them as mp3s. Then I import them into the slides in Captivate.

I tend to speak in a quiet monotone, so doing voiceover takes some extra effort. I have to shut myself in a room so that as I read the script, I can speak up loud enough to get varied tones going. That went all right, but it still didn’t sound natural. So I tried something a little different.

I started gesturing a little with my hands while recording. Interestingly, it made a large difference. My tone sounded much more relaxed and conversational. Tonal changes happened in better places. I also read the script with fewer mistakes. So there’s a trick for my bag.

Speaking of something I learned about doing demos, the manager of one of the projects I work on asked me to show one of the demos to the team in a meeting last week. I had included the built-in keyboard tapping sound for typing animations, but I shortened the animations so that the typing went a little faster. The result was about 5 characters per tapping sound. There were some jokes and laughter about this, so I decided it’s probably better to do away with the tapping altogether.

Related posts (auto-generated):

  1. SharePoint as a Way to Manage Document Reviews
  2. The Auditory Learning Style in Tech Writing
  3. Writing Documentation Like a Real, Live Person
  4. The Result of Working with the Stakeholders on Our Training Scheme