A Couple of Things I Learned about Captivate Demos Last Week
November 18th, 2008I’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.
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November 20th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Trying wearing a wired mic (like the wee ones they use on TV, there’s a reason for that). You can walk around, pretend you are presenting to a room full of people and tap into your energy that way.
November 20th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Now you’re just thinking outside the box, and I don’t think I can handle it. Seriously, though, that’s a good idea. I’ll have to mention it to the boss.
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Yep, that keyboard tapping can become bothersome in playback. I’ve always disabled it. It’s been almost a year since my last Captivate project. I miss it but concede that for me, voiceovers were the most difficult aspect to get right with my perfectionism…
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November 27th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
[...] I realized that my conversation technique, which I wrote about with such praise last time, was flawed. When I converse naturally with others, I speak in a boringly flat tone. My colleague has the same problem, only he says he sounds like Eoyre, the donkey on Winnie the Poo: 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. (”A Couple of Things I Learned About Captivate Demos Last Week“) [...]