For years and years, I've made plenty of voiceovers
from my YouTube videos
and learned some very valuable lessons
throughout the course of this journey.
For instance, that you don't really need
expensive recording equipment to record amazing voiceovers
and that you sometimes don't even need a microphone at all,
but more about that later.
Hey, everyone, my name is Tim,
and in this video I'll give you a beginners walkthrough
how you can start recording voiceovers
for your YouTube videos in a very quick and easy way.
I'm doing this by taking you
through one of my YouTube projects
that I'm currently editing.
Right now I'm making an informative video
about the Netherlands,
and I only assembled some related star footage
that I found in this video editor called VEED.
Now, what my YouTube video needs is some narration.
Before I even think about a voiceover,
I make sure I have a script of some sorts to make sure
that I'm saying the right things in my video.
If you need help creating a script, I recently made a video
how I used AI to create my video script,
which might be insightful to watch if you're interested.
So there are two ways how I add voiceovers to my videos.
One includes a microphone and one doesn't.
But first, let me show you how I do it with microphone.
So in this editor, there's a very helpful voiceover tool
we can use to record our voice.
When you click on it, you'll notice a menu
in which you can select any of your microphones
your computer can detect,
which you can use for your voiceover.
So about microphones, I found that you don't really need
the most expensive gear
to achieve the highest quality recordings possible.
When I started out, I simply recorded with my laptop
and wired earbuds with a microphone in it,
which easily did the trick.
I just had to make sure I recorded
in a somewhat quiet environment
with non-echoey acoustics.
However, if you really want to get more professional
with your YouTube videos and you're looking for more crisp,
warm quality in the audio.
I've got a personal recommendation list
of different microphones with a good price
and quality ratio.
If you're interested, you can find the links
of these products in the description.
My personal favorite in this list
is the well-known USB microphone, the Yeti X,
which I used for my podcast for a while.
I liked it because it was affordable,
I could instantly plug it into my computer,
and the sound sounded very warm and crisp.
Right now I've got the Shure SM7B hooked up,
which is the industry standard for most recording studios.
But I don't recommend this one for beginners
as it's very expensive, it's very technical,
and it's also stationary.
To put it into perspective, if this microphone
would reach 100% score in quality, then the ones I mentioned
in the list would reach around 80%, which is very decent
and they're much more affordable.
So again, if you were a beginner,
I would start with one of those.
All right, back to the voiceover bit.
So when you selected your microphone, you got your script,
you drink some water, and no dogs are barking
in the streets, it's time to start recording your voiceover.
It's very universal, but in this video editor,
click on the big red recording button and simply talk away.
And I recommend just letting your recording
keep on recording.
If you make any mistakes, you can always trim them out layer
and pick the best parts out.
And just in case, I sometimes even repeat some of my lines
so I can pick the ones I like the best
during editing later on.
Then as soon as I finish all my lines,
I click on the same red button to stop the recording
and the tool automatically makes it an audio file,
which I can find back in the timeline.
And a quick tip, if you literally have no decent microphones
at your disposal, you can hook up to your computer.
Simply use your smartphone to record your voiceover.
The microphones in your phone are usually surprisingly good.
If you have your script and your video footage,
you can simply play back the video
and record a voice memo on your phone
so you can synchronize the timing a bit.
And what's nice is that you can instantly import
the audio recording into the video editor,
which will appear in the timeline.
Now, after recording or importing my voiceover,
I'm listening back to my recording and make sure the audio
is loud and clear enough.
I sometimes hear some unwanted background noise
in my recording, such as wind or construction work.
What I do here is simply use the AI clean audio tool
I can find in this editor.
In one click, it automatically removes
the background noise very quickly.
All right, next thing I'll do, because I made many mistakes
and many double takes in this recording.
Hey, how's it going everyone? Okay.
Hey, how's it go?
I'll use the timeline to cut out the parts I would like
to keep for my recording.
I simply make cuts at the beginning and ending
of the audio parts I would like to keep,
so I can easily separate those
from the main recording layer.
Then I delete the remaining unwanted parts
and assemble the voiceover clips I want to use
for this video by repositioning them in the timeline.
This is how to do it manually.
But nowadays, some editors provide AI tools
to speed up the editing process.
For instance, the editor I use has an AI trimming tool
called Magic Cut.
It basically does the same thing as we just did,
but it does it automatically and a lot faster
as it cuts down the unnecessary parts
while keeping the best parts of my recording.
Again, you can do this manually, as I explained before,
but AI tools like this can save you a lot of time.
I usually place them in the right order
and try to sync them up with the video I already created
so that the right voiceover piece happens exactly
at the right visuals.
And I'm aware of myself, I can talk a little bit fast.
I'm a little bit of a fast talker.
So what I usually do is when some of my clips are a bit fast
or a bit slow,
in the menu, I slightly change the speed of my audio clips
just to make it a bit more understandable.
And that's it.
So when my voice recording is done,
I usually just add some nicely animated auto captions
to my YouTube video, which is great
to accompany my voiceover with.
And of course, I'll add some fitting background music
from the music stock library.
Oh, and this is very crucial, but when you add music
or other audio, make sure that the audio doesn't overshadow
the volume of your voiceover.
Hey, how's it going, everyone?
Welcome back to my YouTube channel.
When I add music, I usually just lower the volume
a little bit so it can suddenly play
in the background whilst the voiceover can be heard clearly.
Hey, how's it going, everyone?
Welcome back to my YouTube channel.
So this is one way how I add voiceovers
to my YouTube videos, but there's also another way
that doesn't require a microphone at all,
and it's actually very efficient too.
So let's rewind and go back to where we started.
I've got my video project and I don't have a microphone,
but I still want to record a voiceover.
What do I do?
Well, what I'm gonna do in this video editor,
I simply head over to audio.
In here, I can simply type out or paste my script,
select a language, choose a narrator voice,
and literally generate my voiceover from scratch.
- [Narrator] The Netherlands is renowned
for its incredible water management systems.
- On top of that, you can make it even more personal
by using AI voice cloning, which seems to be a rising trend.
And fortunately, this editor has this option.
You only have to record your voice once,
and you'll always have your voice at hand
to do your text-to-speech voiceovers
for your YouTube videos anywhere at any time.
Fact number one, the Netherlands is renowned
for its incredible water management systems.
I can do the same things here we did
with the other voiceovers, such as trimming the audio
and changing the volume speed and more.
I use text-to-speech all the time.
It's a quick, easy and reliable way
to still be able to add voiceovers to your YouTube videos.
And that's it.
So when you're happy with your YouTube video with voiceover,
you can easily export it by heading over to Done
in the right top corner,
choosing your preferred Render Settings
and clicking on Export Video.
And when the video is rendered, you can download
and share the video for your YouTube audience to enjoy.
So that's how I voice over my videos.
I hope this video was helpful.
By the way, the editing software I used
in this video was VEEDs online video editor.
If you wanna try it out for free,
you can click on the first link in the description.
For now, thank you so much for watching.
Good luck and see you next time.