Narrate Your Way To Success

Speak out! Narrate your way to success Matthew Ellison matthew@uaeurope.comTechnical Communication UK20th – 22nd September, 2011The Oxford Belfry, Thame

Who am I?• Technical Director of UA Europe conference• User Assistance specialist• Trainer/consultant in User Assistance and eLearning• Voiceover professional• Amateur actor

What will we cover today?• When is voiceover narration appropriate?• Why should you use it?• Guidance on recording voiceover narration• Pros and cons of simulated voiceovers (Text-To- Speech)• Guidance on using Text-To-Speech

Sample applications• Adobe Captivate 5.5• SpeechOver Professional 4.0 • Recording • Closed Captions • Text-To-Speech (TTS)

Voice characteristics• Expression/tone/accent/personalityQuestion: Is voice “better” than text?• Fixed paced (real time experience)

When is voiceover narration appropriate?• Information accompanies real-time media: • Video • Animation • Demo• Entertainment (Performance)• Multi-tasking

Why use voiceover narration?• Is voiceover better than text captions? • Yes!• Demo + audio is more effective than Demo + text Mayer (2005c)

What about accessibility?• User can’t hear the voiceover• Use optional subtitles (closed captions)

What can go wrong?• Poor recording equipment and/or environment• Poor delivery: lack of expression, inappropriate accent, wrong pace

Choosing a microphone• USB connection to computer• Cardioid pick-up area• Condenser • Better sound quality • Less robust

Invest in a Pop Filter• No pop filter• With pop filter

Choosing an environment• No background noise• Small room or enclosed area• “Soft” walls

Tips for making your voice more engaging• Vary your pitch, pace, and inflexion• Smile (but don’t sound as though you are suppressing a laugh)• Speak to an individual• Recording in short chunks

Recording audio in Captivate 5.5

Text-to-Speech (TTS)• Rapid developments over last 3-4 years• Concatenative synthesis• Many different voices and accents now available

Text-to-Speech (TTS) Application TTS Engine

Quality criteria for TTS voices• Naturalness• IntelligibilitySee what you think:• http://www.nuance.com/vocalizer5/flash/index.html• https://acapela-box.com/AcaBox/index.php

Comparing Human Voice and TTS• TTS lacks the subtle nuances and variety of expression used by a real human voice

Comparing Human Voice and TTSText on Screen Text-to-Speech Human Narration Human NarrationNo voiceover Narration In-House ProfessionalLowest Cost Highest CostFastest SlowestEasy to Change Hard to ChangeLeast Hassle Most Hassle Tony Karrer , 2010

TTS for Adobe Captivate 5.5• Microsoft Sam or Anna (US)• NeoSpeech: • Paul (US) • Kate (US)• Loquendo • Simon (British) • Juliette (French) • Stefan (German)• Additional voices can be purchases • Acapela, AT&T Natural Voices, Cepstral, Nuance, and others

Adding TTS in Captivate

Fine-tuning TTS pronunciation and prosody• Good punctuation• Phonetic spelling• Mark-up languages • Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) • VoiceText™ Markup Language (VTML)

Fine-tuning TTS pronunciation and prosody• Loquendo mark-up controls http://www.loquendo.com/en/demo- center/interactive-tts-demo/

Fine-tuning TTS pronunciation and prosody

Fine-tuning TTS pronunciation and prosody • Pronunciation Editor for Adobe Captivate 5.5 TTS (NeoSpeech voices only) • For more information, see tinyurl.com/6397ose

Final tips for voiceover narration• Recording demo in real time (full-motion video): • record narration as you record demo• Recording demo as screenshots: • add narration later• Always write a script• Use shorter sentences and more informal language than you would for written text• Use Text-to-Speech for first draft• Ideally use a human voice for final version

References and further reading• Mayer, R E (2005c). Principles for managing essential processing in multimedia learning: Segmenting, pretraining, and modality principles. In R.E. Mayer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning (pp. 147-158). New York: Cambridge University Press• e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning, Ruth C. Clark and Richard E. Mayer, 2nd edition (2007)• Tony Karrer’s eLearning Technology blog: Text to Speech, http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/05/text-to-speech.html• Want to Create Engaging Screencasts? TechSmith, http://tinyurl.com/2ertj6v• Matthew’s blog on Adobe Captivate, http://blogs.highlander.co.uk/tag/captivate/

Narrate Your Way To Success

by TCUK on Sep 26, 2011

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