How to do a voiceover on PowerPoint
Adding voice overs to PowerPoint and Google Slide presentations was never this easy. Murf makes it super simple and fast, so that anyone can create a professional narration in PowerPoint. And the best part is, you do not need to record a voice over for presentation or do any post processing on your voice.
With Murf Studio, all you need to create professional quality narrated presentations is a script and just your laptop or computer. We recommend creating a script for the PowerPoint narration in advance, but if you prefer coming up with the content on the go, that's cool too. Editing scripts and making voice over changes is just so simple with Murf, it can be done in minutes. In fact, if you need to change order of slides or add new slides later on, that is also super easy and fast.
Before you begin creating a voice over for PowerPoint with Murf, let's take a quick look at how to get your presentation and script narration ready.
Voice over PowerPoint
Once you are done creating your presentation, review it for any modifications. Also, if it is a long presentation, check the time allotted to the presentation vs. the total number of slides that you have.
A rule of thumb to use is to allot 30-60 seconds to each slide in your presentation.
Once your PowerPoint or Google Slide, presentation is final, you need to save all the slides in image format to add voice over. Murf Voice Studio supports JPEG and PNG formats for images, so make sure to choose any one of them while exporting.
How to Convert your presentation to Image Format
If you are using PowerPoint for Windows or Mac, just open the presentation in PowerPoint and
go to File -> Export as shown below:
Now select JPEG or PNG in File Format, and select Save Every Slide Option and Export.
If you would like to have the final narrated presentation in a specific size, you can specify that size for the image here.
Pro Tip: Standard size for a YouTube HD video is 1280 x 720 px.
Once you press Export, this will create a folder on your computer with all the Slide Images numbered as shown in the image above.
Creating the perfect voice over script
Here are our Top 5 Tips that will help you create a good narration script for voice over in PowerPoint:
1. Make every word count
When you are typing out your script, think of it as a conversation with your audience, not an essay. Murf Studio shows you the accurate estimate of narration time once you render the voice, so you can always make changes on the go.
But as a rule of thumb for the draft script is 150-180 words/minute, for 1x speed of narration in Murf Voice Studio.
Perfect length of voice over script per slide:
If you allocate 30-60 seconds/slide, the voice over script should be in the range of 75 - 180 words per slide.
2. Check your grammar & punctuations
Incorrect grammar can make your narration sound unprofessional, so it is recommended to get your script checked in advance.
Punctuations are very important for Murf, to understand how a particular sentence should to be interpreted and emphasized. A comma in the wrong place can sometimes imply a very different interpretation. You can of course make changes to this on the go while creating the voice over in Murf Studio.
3. Make unique pronunciations work
Pronunciation for names and other proper nouns can sometimes be very unique. While using the Murf Studio, you can try changing the spelling of such words in case the pronunciation is different from your expectation. E.g. Murf can also be written as Murph for clearer pronunciation.
4. Keep the script tone consistent
Decide on the level of formality you want in your narration and keep it the same across slides. This will help you choose a voice that works well with your script and result in a professional voice over.
5. Use simple, short sentences
This will keep the flow of voice over easy to follow. While listening to presentations, audiences can get distracted in a matter of seconds, so simple short sentences do the job best for voice overs. If you want to have pauses in your presentation for the audience to read through or think over some question, it is possible to add that in Murf Studio by adjusting the timing of each slide. It is flexible to configure as per your needs.
Now that our presentation slides and script are ready, we will follow a simple 5-step process in the Murf Studio to create and add voice over to a presentation.
How to create voice-over narration for your PowerPoint Presentation
5-step Tutorial on how to add voice over to PowerPoint in Murf Studio
Step 1 - Create a Project and Upload Slides
To start a new project, Click 'Create a new project' icon as shown below and upload all the slide images.
You can upload the slide images in JPEG or PNG formats here, not .ppt or .pptx as shown above.
Step 2 - Enter your script
It's time to enter your script. If you have the script ready, you can just copy paste it, else just start typing it out as you go through each slide.
It is recommended to create a new text/audio block for every slide, so that the timing of narration and visuals can be easily adjusted in Step 4. However, if you narration script runs across slides, you can just use the same audio block for multiple slides as well.
Step 3 - Choose Voice for voice over in PowerPoint and Background Music
Murf Studio offers you over a dozen choice of voices to choose from, depending on which English accent, gender and age-group you need.
To try a voice, you can either listen to the sample from the dropdown or just apply the voice to any one audio block , then press Render. Once the voice is rendered, press the Play button next to the text block to listen to the voice over.
Here are the list of voices with styling features that they support:
How to Adjust Pace of Narration or Pitch of Voice
You can customize the speed of narration and pitch of the voice depending on your requirement from the top Voice Menu.
How to Add Emphasis to a specific part of the voice over script
If you want to add emphasis to a certain part of the script, try the emphasis feature available with most voices.
How to Add Background Music
You can add a background music to a specific part of the presentation, or the entire presentation. To add a background music, go to the menu on top, Select Background Music and then upload any track of your choice.
Once uploaded, it will show in the music section of the bottom panel. You can then adjust the timing of the background music track by simply changing the size of the music block.
Step 4 - Adjust timing of voice and visuals
Once it is rendered, you can see the timing for the narration and the current size of the audio block right above the text. First thing to do is to adjust each audio box from the bottom panel to fit the timing of the actual narration.
For example - here our script needs 5.1 seconds to narrate, but the audio block is only 3 seconds long. If it gives you a yellow warning like this, you need to increase the size of your audio block from bottom panel.
Then, to adjust slide timing, simply change size of image blocks in the bottom panel. You can match the size of every slide block with its narration timing or add pauses as required. To add pauses, simply increase the size of the voice block beyond the narration time.
Adjusting timing of Background Music
If you want to adjust the music also to play in certain slides, you can just change the size of the background music blocks in a similar fashion.
Step 5 - Render Video and Download
Once you have created your voice over and adjusted timing of audio with the slides, it's time to render it in video format.
If you have chosen a background music track along with a voice over for your presentation, select the amount of emphasis you want to give to each using the slider on the right side.
The closer the slider is towards voice, more will be the prominence of voice over vs music. You can also choose the audio channel type (mono or stereo) before rendering.
And you are done! Your voice over presentation is now ready for preview.
Play the video to check the timing of slides along with the voice over and make changes as you like. If you wish to change any part of the script,
Edit Text -> Render Audio button -> Adjust Slide and Audio Block Size -> Build Video
You can repeat the steps to make changes to your script as you like. Once you are done, you can export your voice over presentation in a MP4 format.
Additional tips to achieve perfect voice overs in Murf Studio
1. Variations in voice styles can make the voice over interesting
- To achieve this, split your voice over into shorter text/audio blocks and try with applying a 10% lower speed or pitch to adjacent sentences.
- Pro Tip - Sometimes a sentence spoken at a 10% slower pace can make your narration sound more dynamic
Check out this example of a podcast intro in Amelia's voice.
2. Emphasis is a powerful tool to enrich your voice over
- A lot of voices in Murf Studio support the emphasis feature. You would find it especially useful if you want to put more weightage on some parts of the script.
- This feature allows you to add 5 input points per block, along with specifying how much emphasis you want to add to that particular part of the script.
Pro Tip - To get the best out of emphasis feature, keep sentences short and upto 20 words or so in a block or paragraph. Beyond that, it would be difficult to specify emphasis clearly.
3. Short pauses with background music is audience friendly
- To add short pauses, just simply increase the size of a voice block beyond the actual narration time by the amount of pause you need. A good way to fill pauses is to include a simple background music
4. Mono and Stereo audio channel choices
- If you choose to use a background music along with the voice over for your presentation, you would have the option of combining the music and the voice over in mono or stereo channel modes.
- Mono - Single channel mode, all speakers will reproduce the same copy of signal
- Stereo - Uses 2 channels for 2 speakers - voice over feeds one speaker and music feeds the other speaker.
Quick Recap
Creating voice overs for presentations is really easy with Murf Studio. Remember the simple steps - convert your presentation in image format and import it into a new project. Now add your script for every slide, choose a voice and styling options and render voice. Once you are happy with the narrations, adjust the slide and audio block timings in the bottom panel. And that's it, build video to create your own voice over presentation. You can also add background music to this if you like. Hope you find this tutorial useful and would give it a try soon.
