What’s up guys. My name is Serge and welcome back to my channel. Today, we’re about voiceovers, and how you can record and edit great sounding voiceovers for your next video. Let’s get started. First, let’s talk about a few things you
need to do before you start recording. Number 1 is get yourself a microphone. You don’t have to spend a ton of money on
this, but pretty much anything you get will sound
better than your built in mic. The mic I’ve been using recently is the
Rode NT USB Mini. This video isn’t sponsored, I did buy with with my own money, I just really like it. It’s small, affordable, sounds amazing, and most important of all, is it’s convenient. Just like it’s name suggests, the Rode NT USB Mini is a USB mic, so you don’t need an audio interface or any other additional equipment to use it. You just plug it into your mac, or even an
iPad, and it’s ready to go. It even has a built in pop filter, so you can get nice and close to it. Next, you need to find a suitable place to
record your voiceover. You don’t need a professional sound studio, but if you can, try and stay away from noisy
environments, or large empty rooms with lots of echo. Eliminate any background noise you can, so turn off any fans or air conditioners, close your windows, and shut off anything else that might be making
noise. The less noise you have in the background, the cleaner your voiceover will be. When you set up to record your voiceover, get your mic as close to your mouth as possible. This allows you to keep you gain levels lower
when recording, and lets the mic pick up more of your voice and less room noise or reflections. We’re now ready to start recording our voiceover. If you use Final Cut Pro to edit your videos, you can record your voiceover right into your
timeline. If you prefer to use a dedicated audio software, you can can use that record your voiceover
track, and import that file into Final Cut. For this demo, we’ll just record our voiceover track right
into our timeline. Another thing I’d like to mentions, is for this example, this will be a voiceover
driven video, so we’ll record and edit the voiceover track
first, then edit the video around that, but you can also do it the other way around, where you edit the video first, then add a voiceover track on top of that. Whichever you prefer. Now, let’s plug in our mic, jump into Final
Cut Pro and get started. Like I mentioned before, this will be a voiceover
based video, so we’ll record and edit the voiceover first, then add our video. Down in our timeline, we have an empty project, ready for the voiceover track. From the Menu bar, select Window, and Record Voiceover to bring up the voiceover
heads up display. Open the Advanced disclosure triangle, and make sure your mic is selected as the
input source First thing we need to do here, is set the
gain level. Start talking into your mic, at your normal
volume level, and watch the meters. Adjust the gain slider until the peaks in
your voice reach about half way up on the meter. This way, you don’t have to worry about
clipping any audio. If you use headphones to monitor your audio
as you record it, turn this on and adjust the gain level for
your headphones to a comfortable listening level. You also have the option of a countdown before you start your recording, if you record over an existing video, you
can mute it while recording, and you can create an audition to record multiple takes of your voiceover. None of these apply to our demo, so I’ll
deselect them. Next, before recording the voiceover, it’s always a good idea to record a few
seconds of room noise. You can record this as a separate clip, or just at the start of your voiceover clip. That’s what we’ll do in this example. So, click the record button, and after a few seconds of silence, start recording your voiceover. Hey guys, whats up. My name is Serge and in todays video… Hey guys, whats up. My name is Serge and welcome back to my channel In today’s video In today's video we’ll take a look at how to record and edit voiceovers in Final Cut
Pro. Let's get started Click the stop button to end your recording. Final Cut Pro adds your recorded track as a connected clip below your timeline. Let’s drag this up into our primary timeline
and do some basic editing. Since, this is an audio only track, switch the timeline view to audio waveforms, and increase the clip height. First thing we want to do, is set the volume levels for our clip. If your volume was fairly consistent throughout
the entire recording, the easiest way to do this, is with the volume slider in the audio inspector. Turn on your audio meters, play back your clip, and adjust the volume slider until the loudest
parts of your recording are hitting around -3 decibels. Hey guys, whats up. My name is Serge and in todays video… Hey guys, whats up. My name is Serge and welcome back to my channel In today’s video we’ll learn how to record voiceovers in Final Cut Pro. Next, at the start of our clip, where we recorded our room noise, find the part of your clip where the waveforms
are the flattest, and use the blade tool to isolate this part. Make sure it’s at least 10-15 frames or
longer in duration. We’ll use this dead air clip whenever we need gaps in our voiceover, so instead of just having complete silence, we’ll have room noise to match the rest
of the recording. Press Command X to copy and cut this part
out, and delete the first part of the clip. You’re now ready to edit your voiceover. Edit this voiceover clip just like you would
a video clip. Cut out all the bad takes, and just keep the
good parts. If you need a pause in your voiceover, use the dead air clip from the start of your
recording. Paste this clip as many times as needed. If you need a longer pause, and paste the dead air clip a number of times, when you play it back, you might notice clicking
in your audio. This is caused by the way the waveforms line
up. I’m not going to get too deep into this, but if you’re running Final Cut Pro 10.4.9
or later, you can add an audio crossfade to take care
of this. Command click all your dead air clips, and from the Menu Bar select Modify, Adjust Audio Fades, and Crossfade. This adds an audio crossfade to all your clips, that should take care of the clicking in your
audio. After you’re done editing your voiceover, press Command A to select all your clips, and Option Command and Up arrow to lift it out of your primary timeline. The audio track gets replaced with a gap clip, ready to be replaced with the video clips to go with your voiceover. That’s how easy it is to record and edit basic voiceovers in Final Cut Pro. There’s way more you can do with this, like compressing your audio, adding EQ and
more, but that’s a topic for another video. The most important part of getting a great
sound is using a good quality microphone, and recording in the proper environment. If you enjoyed this video let me know by hitting
the like button or in the comments below. And if you haven’t yet, make sure to check out the rest of my channel for more Final Cut Pro tutorials. New videos uploaded every week, so please
subscribe. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you back
here next week.
