However, I realize that unscripted narration, even just a few sentences, can be problematic. Eddie VanArsdall commented that using this method often results in a lot of mistakes. He says,

I always scripted my narration and sometimes improvised parts of it, but I could never record it in real time. The pressure of recording and multi-tasking seemed to guarantee that I would make mistakes.

Eddie is right. Unscripted narration can result in a lot of mistakes. Even if you’re 100 percent comfortable with the app, even if you have rehearsed exactly what you’ll say, even if you’re fresh and alert and full of energy, if you’re human, you’ll make mistakes — especially when you read a script or outline and narrate and record at the same time.

Making numerous mistakes can be frustrating. And the more frustrated and tense you are, the more mistakes you’ll make. But before you smash your microphone on the floor or burst a blood vessel in your forehead, consider this comparison: when you write a help topic or article, do you write it perfect the first time? From the first word to the last, do you type out the entire concept and task details flawlessly? Of course not.

So why should we expect to do the same in speech? Speech is perhaps a trickier, more nuanced medium, since changing the tone of one word can bend the meaning in multiple ways. In addition to unintended inflections, when you string together words in real time, you’re bound to have poor constructions, fumbled words, and other errors.

You can re-record the sentences that you fumble. And as you re-record the sentences, you can splice them into your original recording, similar to the way you delete some sentences and add other words in written text. The danger here is ending up with a hodgepodge of different sounds. To avoid the hodgepodge effect, consider the following tips for fixing fumbled sentences.

Record in 1024×768px Resolution

Set your monitor’s resolution to 1024×768px and record the full screen. If you do this, the screen recording will be the same each time. If you need to re-record part of the screen, your recording will match the previous screen’s position exactly — each time.

In contrast, if you just position a capture screen at 1024×768px on a higher resolution monitor, such as 1600×1200px (my monitor’s resolution), then you have to guess about where you’re positioning the capture rectangle on the screen. If you need to rerecord an area, you may not reposition the capture screen in exactly the right spot. But if you change the actual resolution of your monitor and always record at full screen, you can splice in multiple recordings in a seamless way. Trust me on this one — it works.

Wait, you say your users can’t view screen dimensions that big? Okay, if you need to use 800×600, be my guest. But you’ll have to implement so many pan and zoom effects to move around the capture window, it will be maddening to produce the video.

Use Dual Monitors as You’re Recording

Use dual monitors when you set up to record. Put the application and capture window on the monitor with the low resolution (1024×768px). The monitor with the high resolution should have your script. I also set the high resolution monitor as my primary monitor. All my pop-ups from email and other apps appear on the high resolution monitor.

Having the ability to look at a script on my right monitor while recording the application on my left monitor reduces the number of mistakes I make. If you’re trying to read a script written on paper, you’ll struggle trying to figure out where to prop the paper up. If you have to look down and then up to your monitor, and then down and up, recording at the same time as you narrate won’t really work.

Also, you may want to make last minute changes to your script, and if you’re stuck with paper, you’ll have to reprint it each time. The dual monitor provides greater ease for fine tuning your script moments before you record.

Keep the Microphone the Same Distance Each Time

Maintaining a consistent distance between your mouth and the microphone is critical for achieving a consistent sound. If you have the mic at varying distances when you record, it will be difficult to reproduce the sentences that you fumbled and splice them in seamlessly. You’ll find that some recordings sound a little louder, others have more depth, others are softer, and so on. Be consistent with your mic distance and you avoid these problems.

Write Out a Script or Outline Beforehand

Although I recommend against completely reading a script from start to finish, if you write out a script, it will help prepare you for the “unscripted” delivery. Knowing what you’re going to say is key to an articulate delivery. Even if you don’t look at your script at all, having written it will put the words in your mind, ready to be recalled at the right time. When I give presentations at conferences, I write out my scripts via blog posts beforehand. I can talk for more than an hour without a carefully detailed list of bullet points to look at. It’s the same concept with recording screencasts.

Hit the Pause and Resume Key Often

Almost every recording software has a pause and resume key. In Camtasia, it’s F9. I often deliver a paragraph or concept, pause, and then rehearse the next part of the script before resuming. Pause and resume works well as a way to reduce mistakes, because you’re not trying to remember a five minute script in one go. You piece together little parts to make a whole.

Fix Errors Immediately After the Recording

As soon as you finish recording, go back and listen to it. Where you make mistakes, re-record those sentences right then, while your tone and mood are still the same. If you wait until another day, chances are it will be harder to reproduce the exact sound. Your voice’s sound is a combination of a lot of variables — how you feel, what time of day it is, what you ate, what room you’re in, the alignment of the stars, and so on. By fixing the fumbled sentences immediately, you increase the likelihood of a seamless patch.

Match the Tone of the Fumbled Sentence By Repeating the Previous Sentences

Before you re-record the fumbled sentence, listen to the previous few sentences. Repeat them several times to get in key with the tone and rhythm. When you record the fumbled sentence, chances are your recording will sound much more seamless.

Repeat Entire Sentences Rather Than Fragments

If you make a mistake while recording, restart the entire sentence from the beginning rather than just the word or phrase you made an error with. If you re-record mid-sentence, you’ll find that some words are blended together in inseparable ways. For example, if you fumbled the sentence “I want more ice cream,” saying instead “I want more axe cream,” don’t just stop your self and re-say “ice cream.” Do you see how the word “more” blends right into the word “ice”? You can’t delete a word from your recording very easily when the words aren’t separate entities. But sentences usually have breaks between them, so they’re much more editable. Also, shifts in tone within the same sentences are more noticeable than shifts in tone between entire sentences.

Try Not to Narrate While Dragging the Mouse

It’s easy to fix fumbled sentences and recordings when you don’t have any mouse movement that takes place while you’re speaking. While it’s not always feasible to leave the mouse stationary as you narrate, you might try to avoid speaking while dragging the mouse around where possible. Fixing those type of recordings can be more difficult, because you can’t chop a second off the timeline without having the mouse jump an inch.

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I have two new buttons on the top: My Calendar and Presentations. Using the ICS Calendar plugin for WordPress, I integrated the events into my blog by plugging the ICAL feeds for the calendars into the ICS plugin’s settings.

The plugin works pretty well. It automatically pulls the event information from the feed without requiring you to do anything in WordPress. You can specify the format for the event details using the tags in the plugin’s settings page. My custom format looks like this:

<h3>%event-title%</h3>
<div class="icalmeta">%date-time%<br/>
%location%</div>
<p>%description%</p>

It’s a little snazzier than the basic page I had previously used. And I only have to enter event information into one place.

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One of my biggest problems when narrating a screencast is that my throat gets all clogged up. I have to hit the pause and resume key every minute or so to clear my throat. Voiceover actors have learned to deal with this problem, since they often don’t have the benefits of a pause and resume key (F9 in Camtasia Studio, P in Audacity).

You can reduce the amount of phlegm that accumulates in your throat by chiefly doing these two things:

1. Hydrate. Drink lots of water, one or two hours before you start recording. Look at how wet and slimy the vocal cords look. If they’re properly hydrated, they’ll function better. Experts recommend that you drink warm water because it will loosen up your vocal cords. They also discourage caffeinated drinks.
2. Avoid dairy, such as milk and cheese. Dairy contributes to the phlegm that collects in the back of your throat.

I’ve read a smattering of other advice. In The Art of Voice Acting, James Alburger says to eat a green apple (not red). Apparently green apples cut down on the phlegm. He also says some voice actors eat greasy potato chips to reduce phlegm. Others squeeze lemons into the water they drink.

Since I’ve been recording screencasts lately, I’ve tried to avoid dairy and drink more water. But yesterday I had Alfredo-cheese pizza and tapioca pudding for lunch. I thought hey, it won’t make that much of a difference.

For the next few hours, my throat seemed like it had a slug stuck in it. I kept clearing my throat, hitting pause and resume after every 10 to 15 seconds, and then continuing.

It turns out clearing your throat is also bad. Peter Drew says,

If you feel mucous building up on your vocal cords, do not clear your throat. Throat clearing grates the edges of the folds of your larynx against each other causing irritation and it just moves the mucous to the side, ready to slide right back over your vocal cords. Drink some water, gently cough, or do the “panting puppy.” Simply stick out your tongue, pointing it downwards, and gently breathe in and out through your mouth, panting like a puppy. Be careful not to hyperventilate!  The panting will dry out the mucous.

The panting puppy? Yeah, just make sure your colleagues aren’t looking when you start doing that. I’m not exactly sure how to clear my throat with the panting puppy maneuver, but apparently a lot of others caution against throat clearing as well. Clearing your throat doesn’t get rid of the phlegm/mucous, it just moves it to the side, which explains why I kept having to clear my throat so often.

LiveScience also warns against throat clearing:

Don’t clear your throat too often. When you clear your throat, it’s like slamming your vocal cords together. Doing it too much can injure them and make you hoarse. Try a sip of water or swallow to quench the urge to clear. If you feel like you have to clear your throat a lot, get checked by a doctor for such things as acid reflux disease, or allergy and sinus conditions.

The more you clear your throat, the more you stress your vocal cords, and before you know it, they’re inflamed and hoarse.

James Alburger recommends gently coughing or humming to clear your throat:

When you need to clear your throat, do it gently with a mild cough rather than a hard, raspy throat clearing, which can actually hurt your vocal cords. Try humming from your throat, gradually progressing into a cough. The vibration from humming often helps break up phlegm in your throat. Always be sure to vocalize and put air across your vocal cords whenever you cough. Building up saliva in your mouth and swallowing before a mild cough is also beneficial. (The Art of Voice Acting)

Let’s sum up the advice we’ve read. To maintain a strong, clear voice without phlegm or mucous building up in your throat, drink a lot of warm water, avoid dairy, eat a green apple followed by a bag of greasy potato chips. If you feel your throat clogging up with mucous, don’t clear your throat. Instead, do the panting puppy, sip some water, hum, and gently cough.

I’m starting to learn the weird rituals of voiceover acting.

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I recorded three samples for comparison. In the first, I just read a paragraph in my normal reading voice. In the second, I actually scrunched my eyebrows down in anger. In the third, I smiled. Listen to the differences.

Just reading normally

With eyebrows scrunched down in anger

Smiling while reading

As I listen to these three samples, I can hear something special in the last one. The first is all right, the second seems as if I’m tense and unforgiving, and the third has a touch of warmth and friendliness to it. It’s simply the smile that seems to change the tone.

For more professional examples, click the Sample Commercial Demo link on this page from Such a Voice. You can clearly hear the way the voiceover artist’s smile changes her tone.

Everyone says to smile

It may be hard to do at first, but smiling is at the heart of a voiceover person’s art and is a technique recommended over and over by professionals. Catherine Marshall says,

Maintaining a smile while doing a voice-over changes the whole energy of your voice, and therefore the voiceover. It’s one of the fundamental voice-over techniques to producing a believable voiceover that’s enjoyable to listen to.

Susan Berkley says,

Your tone of voice is closely linked to your facial expression. A frown on your face will make your voice sound harsh and cold. But a smile will warm up your voice, making it sound warm and inviting.

Dan Levine says,

You need to put a smile into what your reading. In almost every voiceover you’ll ever do, whether it be a commercial or a narration, you need to smile. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be laughing.  There are all kinds of smiles. There are smiles that represent happiness. There are smiles that represent reflection, and kindness, and thoughtful things. But you need to smile. …. The only way to make what you read sound as if you’re smiling, or to make it sound friendly, is for you to actually put a smile on your face.

By the way, that Dan Levine quote comes from a video that’s nine minutes long and covers a variety of tips on voiceover techniques. He also talks about being real, controlling pitch, adding variety, and so on. See the 4:15 mark for the section on smiling.

It isn’t easy to smile

Although everyone recommends smiling while you narrate, not many address exactly how you do it. It’s hard to smile. Try it — while you’re reading this post. Smile and keep smiling until you finish this entire post. It’s no easier to do this than it is to smile while reading a voiceover.  If you find it hard, remember what Levine says: You don’t need  a giant laughing grin. You can have a thoughtful or reflective smile.

Constantly smiling is hard for me because I’m used to being serious. I know people who smile all the time. They have cheery, bouncy personalities and exude happiness. But for some reason (unknown to me), I’ve just grown accustomed to acting serious. But maybe I can learn to change.

Brain is already occupied

Part of the difficulty of smiling while narrating is that you’re often not reading a script when recording screencast tutorials. In my recommendation for sounding natural, I recommend not reading a script verbatim, but rather to use the script as an outline, or to only read occasional sentences.

If you’re narrating somewhat freely as you record, your mind is more occupied. The advice to smile just kind of falls by the wayside as you focus on the application and the words you’re forming in your mind. (By the way, are you still smiling, or did you forget?)

Levine says the smile is a facial expression you get used to making the more you practice. Like almost anything in life, the more you do it, the easier and more natural it gets. At some point, you’ll be able to unconsciously smile while your mind is completely focused on the screencast you’re recording. For now, I have to remind myself at almost each pause and resume.

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Unfortunately, as you get closer to a microphone, the microphone starts to pick up more sounds from your mouth. Say the word “pick” or “pull” and you unleash a gust of wind toward the mic. Really, hold your hand up two inches from your mouth and say a few P or B words. Can you feel the gust? To your microphone, the puff is like a tsunami sound wave. This burst of air is known as a plosive.

When you get close, in addition to plosives, microphones also pick up a variety of breathing noises. When you exhale through your nose, the sound can be a low rumble in the microphone. As you finish one sentence and take a breath to start another, that sudden inhalation gets picked up by the microphone. When you open and close your mouth, the sound of your lips separating and smacking finds its way into the microphone.

Here are a few of the sounds I’m talking about. I’ve used four different mics for comparison.

The easiest way to prevent these plosives and breathing noises from ending up in your recording is through something called a pop filter. The pop filter is essentially pantyhose stretched across a ring and held several inches in front of your microphone. For some reason, the fabric of pantyhose seems to stop plosives. Pantyhose also helps to reduce the various breathing noises I mentioned. In part this is because the pop filter ensures you don’t get too close to the mic.

pop filter

You can make your own pop filter if you’re skilled working with wire and have a way to attach it to your microphone. I once tried this but found no way to gracefully attach the coat hanger wire to my microphone outside of gaudy-looking masking tape, which left my mic handle all sticky when I removed the tape.

I have since bought a $38 Shure Popper Stopper and have had felt it to be worthwhile. (Remember that you’re not buying a strip of pantyhose for $38. You’re buying the mic attachment clip and arm as well as the ring.)

Some pop filters are actually made of metal. I haven’t tried a metal pop filter, but I assume they work too. And metal is durable. If you get a nylon (pantyhose) pop filter, make sure you’re careful not to tear the nylon. One careless scratch and the nylon gets a run. (I know because when I originally removed my pop filter from the case, I think I scratched it against a package staple and it immediately had a run in the nylon, kind of like this. Luckily for me, the store still exchanged it.)

Here’s what the pop filter looks like positioned in front of my microphone.

My pop filter positioned in front of my microphone

What about the sacrificed sound that you give up by distancing yourself from the microphone? With a pop filter, you’re no longer kissing the mic. If you must get extremely close, you can. The pop filter won’t function as well, but you can learn to breathe stealthily, hit pause and resume to take breaths, and edit out your other mouth noises in post-production. You can also just learn to breathe quietly and discreetly. All of this, however, adds to the difficulty of producing a video and extends the post-production time.

For me, the minimization of mouth noises by adding some distance is worth it. I separate my mic from my pop filter with two sideways fingers, and my mouth from the pop filter with the same distance. The sound would be richer if I were closer, but I have to remember that I’m creating a software video tutorial to help someone learn an application, not delivering a late-night thought to sleepless radio listeners. Like your prose, your voice should also be somewhat invisible. Clear, personable, and articulate, but not necessarily a late-night DJ.

The instructions on my Shure pop filter actually say to distance the pop filter between 2 to 8 inches from the mic. I find that different mics record at different levels. When you’re 8 inches away from the mic, the sound quality decreases considerably. If you amplify the sound in post-production, static noise from the background also increases.

One downside to the pop filter is that it gets in your way visually. Some people find them so distracting that, instead of using a pop filter, they speak to the right of the mic a bit, so they aren’t coming at it head on. Rodney Saulsberry writes,

I think every voice-over actor has a comfort zone in front of the mic, a place where he tends to stand in reference to the mic most of the time. I like to turn my head to the right and work off the right side of the microphone. By working off mic I lessen my chances of popping, which occurs when you blow a burst of air into the mic. The sudden burst causes a sound that generally happens when you use “plosive” words that begin with t, b, or p. Some engineers will put a stocking type device in front of the mic to protect it from plosives. I find this device to be very distracting, which is why I developed my off-mic technique.

As I’m recording a video tutorial, the large diameter of the pop filter does get a little in the way of the computer screen I’m looking at. But I’ve traded some visibility for the benefits of the pop filter.

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A lot of people feel the same way about videos. In a recent post, Kristi Leach explains an attitude she once held about instructional videos:

I rarely appreciate video instructions, either–they take too long, because I’m pausing, following the step, playing, pausing again. I was having trouble imagining how videos were going to improve our help systems or fit into our schedules.

For Kristi, prior to her turnaround screencast moment, videos seemed to take too long and were difficult to follow along with in a step-by-step way.

When you write a script for a video (or when you create a general outline), you can avoid the problem of the eternal video — which I refer to as a sense of rambling — by simply keeping the video short. Don’t try to cover too much ground. You can generally speak about 100 words a minute, so keep that in mind with your script. 200 words is a good length.

If you don’t believe me, when you watch videos, look at the video’s time counter and note when you start losing your attention. My patience times out at about three minutes. So I always try to keep my videos at three minutes or less.

Video Length

Guidelines for video length are somewhat controversial. Part of the problem is that video content varies dramatically. If you’re watching an episode on Hulu.com, that’s different from a humorous clip on youtube, which is also different from an instructional video about a software application.

Video2zero conducted a study and found the “ideal run-time for web video 2.5 – 4 minutes.” Betsy Weber of TechSmith says, “For the blog, my goal is usually around a 3-5 minute video.”

Brooks Andrus says we should consider Twitter a model for brevity when creating videos. He explains:

… most [users] don’t have the tools or narrative capabilities to hold the attention of an audience for any real span of time. This is especially true in the screencasting realm which is why I’d like to propose the notion of TweetCasts–120 seconds or less of webcam or screen video. That’s all the time you get to make your point. If you need more time, break your content into chunks, give viewers a rest between segments and try engaging them through a different medium.

I agree with Brooks. As informal video producers, we don’t have the time to implement mesmerizing Hollywood cinematic techniques to keep our audience’s attention. It’s better to break long segments up into little chunks. It might be good to actually keep videos at 120 seconds, as Brooks recommends. Although sometimes you need up to three or four minutes to actually explain a feature, there’s no reason you can’t have several videos about the same feature.

Look at how Lynda.com approaches their videos. The following is a breakdown of videos about PowerPoint.

Lynda.com sample outline

This approach allows the user to skip to the part he or she wants to know. For example, in the above list of videos, I viewed only the videos with the eye icon next to them. Because the videos were chunked into small units, I could skip the video content I didn’t want to sit through. Small chunks give the user control and avoid the problem of never-ending rambling that I explained earlier.

Advantages to Short Videos

Aside from maintaining the user’s attention, keeping your videos short has several other advantages:

No worries about load time. A three-minute video rarely results in a file size of more than 10 MB. In contrast, with a 10 minute video, it could easily be 30 MB, which creates more problems when you deliver it. With large file sizes, you have to consider how to optimize the video. Do you reduce the visual and audio clarity? Do you force users to wait for it to load? Do you resort to streaming options? You don’t have to worry about file sizes and load time when your video is short.

You make fewer mistakes creating it. When you record a video, if you only have two minutes, you’re less likely to make mistakes than with longer videos. If the script is short, you can more quickly rehearse and practice the steps so you know what you’re going to say, what you’re going to click, and you can make sure all the glitches are out before recording. In contrast, with a 10 minute video, you set yourself up for numerous mistakes in both narration and demonstration.

Post-production is easier too. If you have a short video, it’s a lot easier to edit in post-production than a long video. With a long video, you may end up with multiple video segments on your timeline, with several audio tracks, each at specific points on the timeline. Editing an eight or ten minute video can be a nightmare in video choreography. Sliding over audio in one section can produce gaps in another section, and so on. It’s just a lot easier if the video is short.

No need for a TOC pane. If you have a long video, you usually need to add a table of contents so the user can see what you’re covering and when. But adding a TOC pane takes up precious screen real estate that usually you don’t have. If you record your videos at 1024 x 768, adding a 175px TOC pane on the left increases your video’s size to about 1200px, in addition to whatever space the browser frame takes up. You usually can’t assume your viewers will have that much screen real estate. If you shrink your videos, you often end up with fuzzy displays. In contrast, short videos don’t need a TOC because the purpose of the video is focused.

Active learning increases. If your video is short, you increase the sense of active learning that takes place. By active learning I mean you give users control to make decisions, to click to the video they want to see.  This keeps the users more engaged. In contrast, if you force users to sit for extended periods of time in a passive state of mind, without allowing them to choose their own adventure, their minds turn numb. To keep their attention in a long video, you have to resort to all kinds of interactive strategies or cinematic techniques so they don’t fall asleep. Quizzes, branching, let-me-try situations, bending window panes that fly in and out, dynamic illustrations and diagrams — these are all good, but if you don’t have time to implement them, keeping your videos short decreases the need for these tactics.

It can be hard to keep the video short, because sometimes we feel we have to tackle an entire component in one go. But it’s not hard to break a video up into multiple subvideos about the same topic. And what viewer wouldn’t rather click on several two-minute videos than sit through a ten-minute video with an eternally rambling narrator?

In search of this more personable voice, last year I attended a voiceover workshop in my area. The voiceover coach explained that good voiceover artists start by imagining a situation—in their minds they imagine who they are, who they’re talking to, and what kind of situation and environment they’re in.

Voiceover artists have to stick carefully with the script they’ve been given, my coach explained. But they can inflect, add emphasis to control meaning, and play with the rhythm and intonation to bring it to life.

People told me that if I want to focus on the audio like this, I would be better off narrating the audio first and then recording the screen later—in two separate steps, rather than at the same time. I recorded at least 40 different video tutorials like this, narrating first (while trying to imagine myself in a situation); after recording the narration, I listened to the narration while following along to record the screen. Syncing it up took a little practice, but not much.

No matter how hard I tried, though, the narration always sounded stiff, slow, and a little dull. If I put too much inflection and rhythm into it, the narration sounded cheesy and fake. Maybe a background in acting would make it sound as if I weren’t reading a script, but I could never figure this acting thing out. It never sounded completely natural.

Not long ago, I decided to ramp up on PowerPoint through the video tutorials on Lynda.com. As I listened to the tutorials, the narrator’s voice epitomized the natural, personable voice I’d been trying to develop. He didn’t seem to be acting, nor was he a seasoned voiceover pro performing a pre-written script. He didn’t seem to have a script at all. He was just explaining, like a mentor, how various parts of the application worked. But it was perfect, and I quickly learned the more advanced parts of PowerPoint.

I was curious whether he even had a script, so I contacted him to find out. No, he said, he doesn’t record a pre-written narration script first. And neither do any of the Lynda.com trainers, he explained. He records the screen at the same time as he narrates. He did rehearse what he was going to do beforehand.

If all the Lynda.com trainers record this way, and I enjoy these tutorials, I realized that I should probably do the same. So I started to record the screen at the same time as I narrate. I still wrote out a general script beforehand, but I didn’t read it or follow it verbatim. I used my script more like an outline, glancing at it every so often to remember where I was going and what to include.

At times when I needed to explain a concept, I read a few sentences, because articulating complicated concepts in real-time can be tough to pull off with exactness (at least for me). But because the sentences that I read were mixed in with the unscripted narration, they blended well.

My opinion after recording and narrating at the same time? It works. And it has helped me achieve more of a natural voice—something I could never quite do reading scripts. The method isn’t perfect, but it’s better than before.

The downside with unscripted narration, unsurprisingly, is that I make mistakes. Listen to any real speech and you hear a smattering of slurs, missteps, poorly pronounced words, and other fumbles.

But I’ve found that I can re-record these problem patches and splice in my fixes somewhat seamlessly. A half a sentence here, a full sentence there. Sometimes it’s tricky to match the sound, but if I listen to 10 seconds before and repeat it a couple of times before rerecording the fixed sentence, it usually blends in indistinguishably.

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When people see my looking, they don’t understand what I mean by a “quiet” room. What does quiet mean? Stop and listen to the sounds around you. The fan, a ticking clock, a rumbling from a dishwasher or dryer, the hum of the lights, the sound of non-descript white noise, voices from a neighboring office, or cars passing by outside. The sounds are subtle, but when you start recording, these noises amplify onto your audio track.

That’s why you need a quiet room. If you have your own private office, great. If you have to schedule time in a conference room, that can also work. You usually have to work with what you’ve been given.

But let’s say you want something more — your own private recording room, where you can set up your equipment, lock the door, record is perfect silence, and come and go whenever you please, without worrying about someone playing with your expensive microphone.

After weeks of searching, I finally found that room. On the ground floor of our building, I located an unused observation room that’s part of a usability lab which, sadly, no one uses. The walls are lined with cloth panels. There is no fan. The room is isolated from other rooms. There’s a wired connection for internet, and at my request, a locksmith added a lock on the door and gave me the key.

I set up two monitors (hauling them down from my regular cube), a docking station, mixing board, my microphone and other equipment. It’s as close to recording in a studio as I will ever get. I’ve actually been holed up in that room ever since I found it. The solitude is both rejuvenating and helps me be productive. Most importantly, I can record without any ambient noise.

Characteristics of an Acoustic Room

When you’re looking for an acoustic environment at your work, look for a room that has these qualities:

1. Cloth paneling on walls. If the walls don’t have any kind of cloth or soft surface, the sounds will bounce and create echoes and boxy effects. As a test, clap your hands once and listen to the sound. Does it immediately die, or does the clap echo around in the room? You can bring in blankets and drape them around the walls to dampen the echo, but usually you can’t do this in a company conference room. You could also invest in some portable acoustic foam or a reflexion filter, like this one.
2. Fan-free. Usually conference rooms have fans (as part of a ventilation system), but the smaller rooms often don’t, or the fans are less noisy. If you can actually turn the fan off, even better. Although you can apply post-processing to edit out fan noise (using software like SoundSoap), and you can use a microphone that won’t capture many of the sounds from a fan (i.e., a dynamic cardiod mic), the hum of a fan will generally add a static background noise to your recording, which becomes problematic later on when you try to silence the gaps (to silence your breathing noises, for example). At the very least, if all the rooms have fans, pick the room with the least noisy fan.
3. Unschedulability. If you can find a room that can’t be scheduled by other people, or if it’s a room that you can schedule for weeks at a time without interruption, that’s best. Because otherwise you may have to drag your equipment in and out of the room each time you want to use it. In a later post, I’ll explain why dual monitors makes life easy. Do you really want to drag in two monitors and all your other recording equipment in an out of a conference room multiple times a day?
4. Isolation from other people. Conference rooms and offices in workplaces are usually located next to other rooms and offices because proximity to your colleagues enables collaboration and exchange. But if the walls are thin, those voices carry over to your room at the worst times (right in the middle of a perfect recording). You need to find a room that is isolated from other rooms as much as possible.
5. Lockable. Once you set up your fancy recording equipment, it’s nice to be able to leave everything as is and walk away, locking the door behind you. If you can add a lock on the door, you can secure your equipment in a convenient way.
6. Windowless. Look for a room with either no windows or low visibility. At my work, we have convenient team rooms right next to every row of cubes. But the team rooms have large windows on both sides. One time (the only time), I recorded some tutorials in one of these team rooms, and within 10 minutes, my colleagues were peering in the windows to see what I was doing. One colleague saw the microphone and immediately entered, saying “Hey Tom, what’s up?” with a big smile. After I finished and went to a meeting, another colleague put a post-it note on my microphone that said “Karoake anyone?” The less other people see you, the better.

Why is acoustics important?

One of the key advantages in finding (or creating) a good acoustic environment is being able to reproduce the exact same sound when you’re editing your recordings. If you have to constantly change rooms with different acoustic environments, you can’t easily splice in patches or fixes to your recordings. By maintaining the same environment and setup, you can fix little bits here and there if you make mistakes. As you’re editing the audio, you can decide to re-record a sentence here and there, and it will sound seamless because you’re in the same acoustic environment.

If you can’t find the right acoustic environment, that’s all right. Make do with what you have. In a later post, I’ll talk about using a dynamic cardiod micrphone, which does a good job at capturing the immediate sound in front of it and blocking out peripheral sounds.

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• Scriptorium
• Intelligent Content
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2
• Alma Loveland, Designer
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One way I prepare for presentations is by writing a series of blog posts about the topic. So over the next two weeks, I’m going to write 10 posts about developing a personal voice in audio. The ten topics will most likely be as follows:

1. Finding an acoustic environment.
2. Sounding natural.
3. Avoiding a sense of rambling.
4. Setting up your microphone.
5. Controlling your breathing.
6. Rehearsing the script.
7. Imagining a scenario.
8. Dealing with mistakes.
9. Post-processing the audio.
10. Improving your voice.

I admit that I feel like a novice with this topic. I’m not a voiceover professional, sound engineer, or e-learning guru. I do podcasting and screencasting. But voice is a topic I’ve been enthusiastic about for a long time.

Blog Sponsors

• Madcap Software
• Edit Me
• Dr.Explain
• Scriptorium
• Intelligent Content
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2
• Alma Loveland, Designer
• Snagit from TechSmith

Scriptorium.com

Interested in DITA? Scriptorium is offering an ongoing series of free webcasts on DITA-related tools and technologies. For more information and to register, visit our website: http://www.scriptorium.com/events.

We recently launched a new set of forums on our web site. Join us to discuss topics of interest to technical communicators—writing, editing, tools, and of course the mandatory gossip board (rumors and innuendos). We invite you to participate with questions and comments—or answers.

Near Seattle? Scriptorium’s Sarah O’Keefe and Simon Bate will be presenting/exhibiting at WritersUA 2010 March 21–24. Simon will be presenting XSL Techniques for XML-to-XML Transformations on Monday at 3:25PM. The WritersUA conference is always an excellent source of information on a wide range of user assistance topics. Stop by our booth on Monday or Tuesday. The exhibition is open from 8:00AM to 6:00PM on Monday and again from 8:00AM to 5:30PM on Tuesday. If you’d like to schedule some time with Sarah or Simon, email info@scriptorium.com and we’ll set something up.

Scriptorium Publishing provides expert advice on how to develop, deploy, and manage content. If you are facing a difficult publishing challenge, we want to hear from you. Contact us at info@scriptorium.com or 919-481-2701 x105

Madcap Software

MadCap Software Adds Powerful New Features, Usability Improvements to the Latest Release of Flare, Blaze, and More

In an effort to provide the very best in technical communication, MadCap Software is pleased to announce the latest release of MadCap Flare, Blaze, Analyzer, X-Edit and Echo.

Web, Print, Desktop — and Now Mobile with MadCap Flare
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New in Flare Version 6:

• WebHelp Mobile (iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android, BlackBerry and more)
• Batch Generate and Publish
• File Tagging and Reporting
• Link Viewer
• Improved Microsoft Team Foundation Server Integration
• Regenerating MadCap Capture Images
• Template Manager and Template Improvements
• Target Editor & Table of Contents Editor Improvements
• Import and Convert Multiple HTML Pages
• Send Multiple Files for Review
• Structure Bar Improvements
• Enhanced Multimedia Support
• Index and Concept Window Pane Enhancements
• New PDF Engine with Improved Font and Character Support
• Plus much more!

MadPak Product Suites

MadCapʼs newest releases can be purchased together in one complete product suite. The MadPak product suite—featuring MadCap Flare, X-Edit, Analyzer, Mimic, Capture and Echo—is a collection of tightly integrated authoring tools that give technical writers the power and flexibility to develop rich, robust documentation. For those involved in translation, The MadPak ML product suite includes everything you love about MadPak, and combines it with MadCap Lingo, the industry’s first fully-integrated translation memory and authoring solution.

For more information, visit www.madcapsoftware.com.

Blog Sponsors

• Madcap Software
• Edit Me
• Dr.Explain
• Scriptorium
• Intelligent Content
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2
• Alma Loveland, Designer
• Snagit from TechSmith