How To Voiceover A Video And Minimize Manufacturing Prices
How to get a video without breaking the bank
A 60-minute voiceover can cost you $ 900 if recorded in-house, or $ 1,249 if you use a voiceover agency. On a text-to-speech platform like WellSaid Labs, that 60-minute recording costs you a measly $ 11.76 in comparison. Even when you factor in the time the employee spent with WellSaid Labs, you are consuming about $ 312 – roughly a third the cost of in-house production and a quarter of the cost of working with a language agency.
So how can you use text-to-speech to reduce your eLearning product costs? Let’s discuss.
eBook publication
Text-to-Speech for L&D Professionals: The Next Frontier of Storytelling
Learn how to create engaging online training experiences that attract learners’ attention and encourage an emotional connection.
4 reasons why text-to-speech voiceovers reduce costs
1. Audition as much talent as possible as soon as possible
One of the areas L&D professionals get stuck in before they even start recording is finding the right voice actor. It takes time to contact voice studios and get samples from voice actors. You need to be able to audition as many talents as quickly as possible while minimizing the hassle of emailing, contacting, and scheduling.
Instead of spending months in this process, text-to-speech lets you audition dozens of voice actors in minutes, all from the comfort of your computer screen. (I have to love the sound.) You don’t have to schedule meetings with voice avatars, wait for people to reach out to your people, and spend months trying to find the right voice. Reduce that initial search to a 30 minute session on your calendar and move on.
2. Test a sample before investing in full production
Before you overtake yourself, even if you find a voice that you instinctively like, you want to make sure that it actually works as you read your script. Like it or not, there is a difference between the sound of a voice selling laundry detergents and the articulation of complex legal content.
Most voice production studios don’t just record snippets of your content before you’ve hired an actor and booked a recording studio. But this is where text-to-speech is so powerful – you can type in a snippet of your script and compare how your top avatars read it. Within minutes, you can be sure which voice is right for you. Not only does this save you time, it also saves you costly fees for recording content with a voice actor and then realizing that you have to re-record because it doesn’t sound what you expected. (It’s not a fun conversation with your boss either.)
3. Minimize the time required for planning
Even if you can’t always easily tell how much planning time adds up, it costs your day to spend on it… compared to all the other things you might be working on. It takes time, effort and money to book studio sessions, wait for the final productions, listen to everything, re-record if necessary, and start the process from scratch.
But with text-to-speech, you don’t have to book rooms or voice actors. You can simply produce whenever it suits you, wherever it suits you. You can do this when a window opens on your schedule. You can do it on the weekend. You can do it on the plane. Indent. A bus. An automobile. It’s incredibly convenient and gives you full control over when the recordings take place and when the final video editions are ready.
4. Maximize the number of people who can manufacture products at the same time
Depending on the size of your organization or team, there may be multiple people involved in the production process, from writing to editing to recording and designing and beyond. Traditional recording methods are not scalable as only one person can record with the same voice at a time. But with text-to-speech, you can have multiple people using the same branded avatar without paying for extra studio time.
With text-to-speech, you can have an entire production team work on multiple scenes. You can scale your team to beat deadlines, break projects down into manageable pieces, and keep your speech avatars ready and at your service when you – or your entire team – are ready. Imagine if the whole process works like a symphony. A symphony that is under budget and ahead of schedule.
Conclusion
Text-to-Speech not only saves you time, but also a lot of money. Text-to-Speech enables L&D teams to test multiple avatars in minutes, demonstrate examples of their actual content before recording, minimize planning time, and maximize the number of team members using the same language and Phonetics library can work together. In this way, text-to-speech not only offers a simpler voiceover process, but also a cheaper one.
Download the Text-to-Speech For L&D Pros: The Next Frontier Of Storytelling eBook to learn how to maximize AI speech generation software for your remote learning teams and increase engagement. It covers everything from tips on cutting costs to engaging online learners with lifelike speech synthesis. Also attend the webinar to learn how to update eLearning voiceovers on time and on budget!
