How many times have you finally found the video that was going to solve that issue that’s driving you nuts, only to open a video with sound so horrible you can barely make out what the solver of your problem is saying? How many times have you cringed when a YouTube ad loads with poor quality video and audio? It just screams amateur. It screams, I don’t want to do business with this person or brand. That is advertising dollars flushed right down the drain.
If you are going to take the time to post a video to YouTube or put money into advertising, please make sure you put some time into the quality of the production. Poor quality is a turn off. It can be squashed by learning how to produce high quality videos and audio or recognize that you don’t want to put the time into leaning how and it’s time to hire someone who knows.
Listen, we all start somewhere. I know my first videos are not the greatest either, but I also wasn’t pumping money into using it as advertising on a platform with literally millions of people can see it. If you’re a company that is working on its brand, then I can’t think of a better way to tell your story than through video marketing. High-quality video marketing is so attenable. It doesn’t even cost much to get a professional to help you with it and the mileage you can get out of a single video or small series of videos is amazing.
Tell the story of your brand. Solving your customer’s biggest problems or answering their most asked questions is the perfect recipe for video marketing success.
Step #1 – Environment
Good sound. It starts with the space you’re using to record your video audio. I hear people say all the time, “I’ll record this in my bathroom, the reverb is great.” No, no it’s not:) High level audio should be recorded in a controlled space with sound absorption. Have you seen videos of your favorite actors recording voiceover’s for Disney movies? They do it in a vocal booth. In a controlled environment that gets the most out of the equipment being used and their voice.
This isn’t to say that you must use Disney’s studios to get a good voiceover recording, but there are better places in your house to record than in the bathroom. Even your office space is not great. Sound waves will bounce off untreated surfaces and bounce back to your microphone causing unwanted mud and reflections.
A better spot to start is in your closet. Your closet is filled with clothing, which can work great as sound absorption.
Another thing that I have used in the past is simply hanging a blanket in the closet. Set up the microphone in front of it and speak into the microphone. The waves of you voice will pass into the microphone and then will be absorbed by the blanket, reducing unwanted flections. Give it a try, you’ll instantly hear the difference and in your recordings.
I use 48x15x2 sound absorption panels and I build a box around my microphone, which works exactly like Disney’s studio, but at a fraction of the cost.
Step #2 – Microphones
Next is the equipment. Many cameras and even smartphones have a built-in microphone, and in many cases, they can work great if the environment you are recording in doesn’t have the characteristics outlined above, like the bathroom. If your camera has an input for an external microphone you can use a microphone like the Rode’s shotgun mic that works great when plugged directly into your camera.
I tend to do more voiceover type videos. In other words, I’m not generally recording an individual talking into the camera, I generally am using voice recordings over screen captures or screen shares. In which case I record the voice over and then find imagery to overlay in the video.
For any type of voice over you want to use a decent microphone, not your smartphone microphone, though I have done that in a pinch using the blanket trick above. I typically use a condenser microphone that captures my voice in the purest, high fidelity way. These microphones can cost a little more money and will require phantom power to run, more on that in a second.
I mount a popper stopper in front of the condenser mic on the microphone stand to stop sibilance caused when using words with S’s and P’s. Like when you say popcorn. That P pushes a lot of air out of your face and when it hits the microphone it will get picked up in undesirable way. As you experiment with recording you will undoubtedly run into this and you will know exactly what I mean.
Another great microphone for recording Voiceovers and is used by many of your favorite podcasters is the Sure SM7B, it’s a dynamic microphone that doesn’t require phantom power, but it will cost you around the $500 mark, but if you are going to be making a lot of videos with voice over this would be a recommended investment, although there are many great microphones out there for way less than $500. Just do some research.
Step #3 – Audio Interface
Next In the equipment list is an interface. The interface is how you take your analog microphone and convert the signal to a digital signal to be used by your DAW or recording software. More on that in a second. There are many options when it comes to interfaces, some with multiple channels and multiple price ranges.
You can buy a single channel interface for are little as $30, though you may get what you pay for. The high-end interfaces can run well into the $1000’s of dollars.
I use an interface from a company called Focusrite in their Scarlet series. They are affordable, but have exceptionally clean pre-amps and individual gain control, or volume control. They also have built into them, as many do, phantom power, as mentioned above in the microphone section.
Phantom power is for condenser microphones that need 48-volt power to run. On the Focusrite there is a small button you push to engage the phantom power and power your microphone for use.
In most instances you can probably get away with a single channel interface, meaning you can plug one microphone into the unit.
Step #4 – Recording Software
Now that you have a microphone placed in the right environment with the analog signal being flipped to digital, you need software to record your voice. Some laptops, like Macs, come with a DAW or Digital Audio Workstation. In Macs’ instance, they come with Garageband a free DAW, but even if it didn’t come pre-loaded, you can download it from the app store for FREE.
There are several great DAW’s and most have a free version that will do the trick for your needs. Now if you get into sound recording and want to record bands or larger numbers of people in something like a podcast, you’ll want to purchase a good DAW without the Free limitation that is put on many of them. For instance, many free version will only allow you to record up to 8 tracks in the project, for a simple voice over for your video, this is way more than you need, but if you’re going to record a full band and mix it properly you’re going to need way more than 8 tracks.
Each DAW is set up differently, so reference the materials that come with the unit to get it set up and start recording.
Step #5 – Script
When you’re ready to start recording, make sure that you have your script written out in front of you. This will make for more polished performance and will help you tell your brand’s story. You don’t want to hit record and just start rambling on. You want to tell your story in the clearest, simplest way.
I tend to record in sections, meaning I basically record one sentence at a time, or a cluster by topic. This makes it easier to move the voice over around in my video editing software to line up the imagery associated with it.
Be mindful of background noise, good microphones and especially condenser microphones will pick up more than you can imagine. Your neighbor starting his truck, the low flying plane over your house, the neighbor’s chickens, all real things I deal with regularly.
Once you finish your recording, listen back while reading you script, make sure you didn’t miss a line. Believe me I’ve done this more than once. Listen for unwanted background noise. Listen for those sibilance, S’s & P’s, etc. Now is the time to fix things before you mix it and start using it in your video editing software.
Step #6 – Mixing
Okay, so now you have your video’s story captured, there’s one more step before you mix it down and load it to your video editing tool and this is the part that can take many years to perfect, the mix. For video voice over I would focus on two tools that all DAW’s will come with. Compression and EQ.
Think of you voice recording as waves that go up and down as you speak words. The compressor will even everything out. It will take the softer words and bring their volume up and it will take the loader words and bring them down so that the overall recording is around the same level. The stock compressor, meaning the one that comes with the DAW will be more than what you need.
There is no need to go out and buy third party compressors for your voice overs. Now if you really get into recording and want to take it much further like recording bands, then yes at some point you will graduate to 3rd party plugins.
There are literally hundreds of videos on YouTube that will teach you the basics of the compressor. Just search for compressor followed by the name of your DAW and I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding some instruction. Pro-tip, use it sparingly. Many people, when confronted with a new tool, push it too far because they want to hear the result. You don’t want to hear the compressor, just even everything out with it.
Next is EQ, basically like your car or home stereo there is an adjustment for treble and bass. You can make the tone of the overall sound higher or lower by adding treble or bass and we all know it’s all about the bass:) The stock EQ will do the trick here as well, and many have presets for things like speech, male or female voice. Start with one of those, it will get you in the ballpark and then tweak from there until it sounds good to you.
Much of mixing is subjective, but this will bring consistency and life to your voiceover and will set you aside from the competition, mainly the dude with the terrible audio on his YouTube advertising trying to tell me how to make $1m in a half-hour with absolutely no work on my part:)
Now each DAW is slightly different in how you mixdown and export your audio file for use on your video editing software, so reference the manual that comes with it or simply go watch some You tube videos.
Conclusion
I’m fortunate to have played in bands most of my life and acquired these skills along the way, mostly by trying to save money on recording costs and get my music out to the world. I also am fortunate to have friends in my life that have gone to school to learn how to do all of the things outlined above, but I got to say I’ve also learned a great deal from YouTube, our generation duct tape.
You can find anything there and remember that, people can find your company there as well. Use these tips to make professional-quality videos. Tell your story and put it out in the world for you customers to find you. Have fun! Be creative and most importantly keep learning. The first few may be duds, or maybe not, it could go viral, you just never know?
I realize this is lot to take in. I realize you probably have a business to run and don’t have time to even research which interface, microphone or DAW would be best for you, but this is where video marketing professionals like me can help.
Hit me up I love this stuff. Video marketers love learning about the technology, how to improve our next recording, how to tell or next story a little bit better and to be honest it won’t even cost you that much and telling your story to the right person at the right time can easily net you way more than it cost you to make the video.