How to make a voice over video

December 23, 2020

Voices help us connect with each other. It has been the most primitive and natural form of communication since the origin of speech about 500,000 BCE. Even today, researchers believe that we, as humans, encode our thoughts first in sound to process it. Did you just hear your voice saying this out loud in your mind?

Hence, it is not surprising that when we watch a video, our engagement and grasp on the story increases significantly if it has a voice over. There are of course some videos where storytellers do an amazing job of conveying emotions through just music, but in most other cases, video voice over is a great way to communicate effectively.

Let’s quickly take a look at an example of this shoe promo video with voice over:

and now let's take a look at the same video without the voice over:

A world of difference, isn’t it?

Now, if you are new to voice overs and thinking how to make a voice over video, here is a really simple and inexpensive way to do this using the Murf Voice Studio.

Voice over video maker

Murf Studio is a voice over video app that lets you create high-quality professional voice overs for your videos in minutes. With Murf, you do not need any recording equipment or post processing. All you need is your laptop and a script. Murf will convert your script into professional sounding voice overs in seconds and helps you time it perfectly with your video clips. Need background music? You can add that too in the Murf Studio.

Why use Murf to make voice over videos?

1. Save time and cost of recording

This saves cost as well as time in creating professional quality voice overs.

2. Making changes to script was never this easy

With recorded voice overs, a change in script means an expensive re-recording and then post-processing. With Murf Studio, you don’t need to worry about script changes. Just edit your text and press render. Your voice over has been edited in seconds and stitched with the video so you know how it works.

3. Only curated 100% human sounding voices

Murf offers a selection of voices in English across various accents. Each voice is tested for quality against dozens of parameters before it is selected for the Studio.

4. Single tool to create voice over as well as add them to videos

Murf Voice Studio lets you create voice overs, adjust timing of voice overs with video and render with video, all using a single tool. This makes the process really simple and fast.

5. Add free background music

Murf gives you the choice to add all kinds of audio. You can either add your own background score or upload from a collection of royalty free music available in the studio.

Voice over video free software

You can get started for free with the Murf Studio. Choose from a range of hyper-realistic voices, create voice overs, add background music and render the voice overs along with the video, all for free.

If you need some custom voices, you can always check out a professional plan on the pricing page or contact us for more details.

How to do a voice over video

Creating a voice over video with Murf is super easy and fast. Instead of paying a voice over artist to record a voice over for you, or spending hours trying to record the perfect narration in your voice, you can do it in minutes simply by entering your script and choosing from a wide range of versatile professional voices.

Let’s take a look at how to create voice over videos using Murf Studio.

Step 1 - Create a new project and upload your video

Go to the Murf Studio and create a New Project. You would get a pop-up to upload your media files. Select the video you want to add a voice-over to and click upload. You can choose a single video, multiple video clips or image (e.g. an introduction or end screen) as you like. The selected video file or files will appear on the timeline at the bottom on the studio page.

Step 2 - Enter script for voice over

Now it’s time to type your script in the text boxes. If you have a script ready for your voice over, you can just copy paste the same into the boxes.

If you want to add pauses between different parts of the script, you can use the 'Add Pause' option and customise the the length of pause. You can add pasue where you want as per the style of narration.
Murf Studio voices have a narration pace of 150-180 words/minute at normal speed. You can always adjust the pace of speech by increasing or decreasing the speed using the 'Speed' option on the top toolbar.

Step 3 - Select voice and styling options

Murf Studio offers a choice of many voices across age-groups in English language, including American, British, Australian, and Indian accents. You can play the voice samples for each voice from the menu as shown below to decide which one would work for you.

After selecting the voice, you can use a number of voice styling options to cater to your script. Not all voices support all features, but most voice have some or the other customisation options including:

· Speed

· Pitch

· Volume

· Emphasis

You can choose any of these styling options from the top menu itself.

How to add emphasis to certain words in voice over

One of the most interesting features supported by several voices in Murf is Emphasis. This feature helps you provide inputs to the tool wherever emphasis is required while creating the voice over.

Let’s take a look at how the emphasis feature works. You can choose up to 5 points in a block to increase or decrease emphasis as you like.

Render your voice over

After selecting the voice and styling options, you can listen to the voice over by pressing the Render button next to each text block and then play the audio.

Step 4 – Adjust timing of voice over with scenes in your video

For a professional quality video, it is important that the audio is well synced with the pace of the video. Pauses where needed, and even changes in speed of speech can go a long way to add this extra effect.

We have already covered how you can change the pace of narration from the top menu in Step 3. Let’s look at how to add pauses in voice over:

How to add pauses in voice over

To add a pause in your Murf voice over, break the two parts into two separate audio blocks and render voice for each separately. Now, adjust the size of the first block to add 1-2 secs (or a longer pause if you need one) to the voice over time shown right above the text block.

Actual Voice over time – The time the narration of the rendered script would take

Total time of voice block – Time assigned to the block.

You can adjust the size of blocks from the bottom timeline as shown below:

How to adjust timing of video clips with voice over

If you have multiple clips, you can adjust the size of voice block to match every clip so that each voice over plays at the right time.

Same process applies to background music as well.

Step 5 - Build Video and preview with voice over

Once the timing is all set and you are happy with the individual voice renders, press the Build Video option on the right side. The video will get stitched along with voice over as per the timing selected in the bottom timeline.

Preview video and make changes as necessary

If you need to change timing, change the size of audio blocks in the bottom panel and Render video again.
If you need some change in script, just enter the new text, render voice and then render video again.

How to improve your voice over quality

Here are our top tips on how to get the most out of Murf Studio to create professional quality voice overs:

1. Add modulations with voice styling options to make the voice over interesting

Most voices in Murf Studio support pitch and speed customization, and have the option of adding emphasis to certain words. These are very handy to create voice modulations and emphasize certain parts of your script.

2. Change spelling of proper nouns like names, etc to improve pronunciation

Sometimes, you might find that the pronunciation of names and other proper nouns are not quite as per you'd like it to be. To fix this, you can change the alphabets of such words to get to the correct pronunciation.

e.g. Murf can also be spelt as Murph with the same pronunciation. Try it out for the subtle difference in pronunciation.

3. Add pause to provide breather and increase impact of your voice over

Sometimes a couple of seconds of pause introduced between two adjacent sentences in a video can significantly impact the delivery style and make it much more meaningful for the user. It is also a great way to provide breathers for users.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we went through the easiest way to add voice overs to videos in just 5 steps using Murf Voice Studio. With Murf, you would have a lot of choices when it comes to voices for different kinds of videos, and also styling and timing adjustment options to keep your voices synced up perfectly with your visuals. We hope you enjoy the tutorial and use it to create amazing voice overs for your videos in Murf.