Voice Over Recommendations....
Question

Question

Hi Y'all,

I've been crudely working on an animation project. Have tried an AI text to speech program which I am not to thrilled about. So I throw out the question if anyone would recommend an AI text to speech program for animation voices (real and cartoony) or is it better to record your own voice and modify with effects and any recommended programs for that. It's not easy to get other people to record their voices so that is the reason I am looking into this.

TIA

Answer 1 · 2023-09-24T21:29:25Z

replied September 24, 2023 9:29pm

I have found that it's better to record your own voice and just modify it. I use audacity(https://www.audacityteam.org/download/) It's free and open source. Ardour(https://www.ardour.org/) is open source and is a full Digital Audio Workstation, but it cost $45 US dollars unless you download the source code and compile it yourself.

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Answer 2 · 2023-09-25T18:37:31Z

replied September 25, 2023 6:37pm

dillenbata3

Thanks for the suggestions. Can I ask what you use for a microphone and if you are in a modified room for sound? I don't have a modified room and just looking into microphones. I don't plan on doing a lot of voice overs, just every now and then I make an animation needing some, which won't be much. Any advise would be appreciated. Thanks

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Answer 3 · 2023-09-25T18:56:38Z

replied September 25, 2023 6:56pm

I don't use a modified room. If you need sound damping you can use moving blankets and rollable clothes hanging things. Sorry forgot what they're called. As for mic I'd suggest you get a better one than I have. I use a pulse xlr directional mic. They're for general sound recording. You will probably want a condenser mic. It doesn't have to be as high end as the yeti blue.

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Answer 4 · 2023-09-25T20:17:15Z

Martin Bergwerf replied September 25, 2023 8:17pm

And to add to that;

be close to the microphone and set the sensitivity (gain) low, then sound damping won't be so important.

Have the microphone close, but to the side of your mouth, so you don't breath into it, to avoid popping sounds.

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Answer 5 · 2023-09-27T17:46:32Z

replied September 27, 2023 5:46pm

Thanks dillenbata3 and Martin,

Is there anything else required with a mic to hook up to the computer? I see there are USB mics but also see advise not to get USB mics, lol. This is a completely different area I wasn't expecting to get into but looks like I will need to start venturing into it on some level.

I'm not sure if I just get a condenser mic and then plug into the computer or do I need some other hardware to accompany the mic?

Thanks for your advise!

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Answer 6 · 2023-09-27T19:06:51Z

Martin Bergwerf replied September 27, 2023 7:06pm

I have a Blue Yeti and that is a USB microphone. Basically a 'plug and play'.

For a voice over that is probably more than good enough. I guess you could go quite a bit cheaper, especially if it's not for live streaming...audio software can upgrade the sound after the fact.

A non USB microphone will soon cost you 2000 Euro upwards with all the other equipment you'll be needing.

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Answer 7 · 2023-09-27T20:15:10Z

replied September 27, 2023 8:15pm

Thanks guys for the advise. I decided to get a Blue Yeti and use Audacity or the software that comes with the mic to start. I don't know if I'm ready for this but eventually I think I need to get into it. I have a crude animation I'm working on and hope to incorporate some voice over. I tried an AI voice over and it was easy enough to use but doesn't sound that good but I may end up using it anyway as I'm not sure how easy/difficult adding voice over will be and I'd like to wrap it up and move on. Stepping stone steps and nothing that great but hope to post it soon for fun and laughs.

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Answer 8 · 2023-09-28T01:27:32Z

replied September 28, 2023 1:27am

The USB thing is dependent on your mother board(Or main board as they call it now). cheap USB inputs create attenuation(A reduction in the electrical signal) and mechanical noise. This is less of a problem with condenser mics. This is also why sound techs will always tell you not to use extension cables. Most of the time people will never notice other then if the attenuation drops to much you get a low volume. Newer computers actually have less mechanical noise than the line in or mic in jacks of the computer. Mechanical noise is also more of a problem with bidirectional, and directional mics. As for voice over work, if you are using standard 24 FPS in audacity at the bottom of the window where it says start and end selection. The time below can be changed to HH:MM:SS+frames(24). If you're using 30 or 60 FPS Then change it to HH:MM:SS+Miliseconds. Then in Blender F4->preference->animation->Timecode Style->Change it to compact with miliseconds. Then in any of the editors with the frames at the top(Timeline, dopesheet, and graph editor) with mouse cursor over the editor press ctrl+T to toggle between timecode and frames. This will make it easier to match the audio length to the video length. Side note: Davinci Resolve actually is both a video and sound editing software. It also has an ADR system. I'm using Linux on an old computer so I can't run Davince Resolve.

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Answer 9 · 2023-09-28T01:54:14Z

replied September 28, 2023 1:54am

Thanks again guys. Just have a rough test of my wip animation for now. I hope to get it complete in a couple of weeks at the most. There are black out parts where I still need to add scenes I am working on. I didn't rig the characters as I haven't got that far yet in animation. This is just an exercise in keyframes from a character I made. It's in the rough stages so I hope to get it more presentab le. The AI voice over is in the beginning and I don't plan any other voice overs through it. I still have a litlle less than 2 minutes of animation to create and put together in VSE. I'm learning a lot of what not what to do for future reference, lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYvsiOg092w

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Answer 10 · 2023-09-28T08:07:09Z

Martin Bergwerf replied September 28, 2023 8:07am

Looks like that's going to fun!

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Answer 11 · 2023-09-28T23:28:33Z

replied September 28, 2023 11:28pm

Nice. The scale sounds fine. The male voice lacks emotions. That's still pretty good for AI voice over. For when the guy gets angry and starts threatening to throw out the scale, record that separately and move away from the mic. That way you can really get the feel of anger in the voice over. Then you can increase that audio to match with the other audio. You can do it either by increasing volume in Blender's VSE or use use filter->Amplify in Audacity. I'd probably leave the scale's voice unless you wanted to add more emotions to it. If you do want to redo the scale then I'd use filter->Pitch or Filter->speed to make it higher pitch. Side note: increasing speed increases pitch. Just like increasing the pitch will shorten the length of the audio wave. You don't have to worry about that for your video, but I thought I'd point that out for future projects.

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Answer 12 · 2023-09-29T02:03:05Z

replied September 29, 2023 2:03am

dillenbata3

Thanks Dwayne.

Yeah, I didn't care for Brad's voice either for same reasons you gave. Thanks for the tips. I may stick with the AI version and split parts up a bit more and maybe rearrange in VSE It was more a test run, I may change the conversation a bit yet but you gave some great tips, thanks. The voice recording is all new to me so I'm not sure if I'll be able to create something better than what I have and I refunded the AI text to speech program so I'm kinda stuck with what I have for the time being to work with. Ehh, it was originally just going to be a short animation that ended up growling but fun to get the feel of doing a animation of some length.

BTW, the songs are from a band called Brad Sucks. The band leader's name is Brad as well, lol. He actually lives about 4 hours away from me, I found out recently. The album is 20 years old this past August and he has number of albums and catchy tunes. I found him on YouTube a couple of years ago. I was modeling the scale character listening to his music and decided to try and make a video based on his music. I requested permission to use his songs and he had no problem with me using them

If interested, here is his youtube page. I will be giving credit to him and also promote his website in the video end credits.

https://www.youtube.com/@bradsucks

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