As lengthy videos can get boring if there is only one person doing the talking, you might want to liven up your video by occasionally changing the speaker. Even when you are working on a video by yourself, you can easily get another speaker to help you: use the text-to-speech functionality in Google Translate, Microsoft Word or Foxit PDF Reader.
What do I need?
To record audio, you need the Audacity multi-track audio editor and recorder, which you can download for free. Read more about Audacity (clicking this link will take you to the intranet).
Besides Audacity, you need a microphone, computer speakers, and a browser to access Google Translate. You also need Notepad, the simple text editor on Windows that is similar to Word. And, of course, you need software for creating video content (remember that you can even use PowerPoint to create video content).
What do I need to do?
- Write a script for the voice overs with Notepad.
- Place your computer microphone close to the computer speakers. Make sure there is no background noise.
- Start Audacity, select the audio source (your microphone) and start the recording.
- Copy a piece of text from Notepad and paste it into the text field in Google Translate. Select the language in which your script is written as the source language. Click on the speaker icon next to the text field in Google Translate, and Google will read your script out loud.
- Stop the recording in Audacity and trim the beginning and end of your recording to remove any unnecessary bits.
- Go to the File menu, select Export and save your recording in WAV format to your preferred location. You may be prompted to provide some metadata relating to your recording; you can answer the questions if you so choose.
- Now you can insert your audio recording, for example, to a PowerPoint presentation.
- You can opt for the audio to start playing automatically once you advance to the slide that the audio file is on, or only when the audio icon is clicked on.
What should I take into account?
- If you want to ensure the best possible audio quality, you can (instead of using your computer speaker and microphone) connect your computer’s audio cable from Line Out to Line In, start Audacity and select Line In audio input.
- Microsoft Word (Word files) and Foxit PDF Reader (only PDF files) have text-to-speech functionalities, too. Foxit PDF Reader can only speak English. Word can only speak the text-to-speech languages that are available on your computer. You can install new languages, but afterwards you will need to restart your computer.