Voice Over Edit

This was my first assignment, to edit a voice over to play perfectly and to make it sound completely natural. Click here to download the finished product, or you can listen to it here.

esther voice over2.mp3

There were a few different programs we could use to do the audio editing, including Logic, Soundtrack Pro and GarageBand. I decided to use GarageBand as I've used it in the past, and found it effective in editing, cutting and pasting audio files.

First of all, we had to listen through the unedited voice over and distinguish which takes were best on parts where the speaker stumbled, stuttered or changed the pace. The first thing I did was listen through, and when I would come to a place where there was a mistake, I would use the Track Editor and zoom tool to find the exact area to delete. I would then select the specific area with the zoom set to extreme close up in order to make the most accurate cuts, without taking out any needed pause or time between sentences.


Here is a photo from the process, done using GarageBand:



After deleting the specific area where there was a mistake, I would then zoom out to find the correct take, and use the the mouse to click and drag the correct sound piece to match up with the one prior, paying attention to pace and natural pause to try to leave room and make it sound as natural as possible. One of the things we had to make sure would not happen would be for there to be a 'double breath', a common mistake in editing audio voice overs. To do this I listened over the edited area afterward, and had to to use the zoom to extreme close up of the sound waves to distinguish exactly which spike in the sound wave indicated the noise of taking in a breath before speaking. While it is natural for a speaker to intake a deep breath before speaking, I had to make sure that I didn't take away from the natural sound of it while making sure that only one intake of breath would be heard so that the place of edit would be unnoticeable and sound as natural as possible.


After finishing editing the voice over, I then downloaded a program called 'The Levelator', a program that automatically adjusts the levels within an uploaded audio file to give a more finished, polished end product.