Adding voice overs to flash movies

[XxXdaNubXxX]

okay, im really new to this flash thing, but i have some good ideas for movies but can't use them because i don't know how to add voice overs. I am stuck to making lame music videos, or stuff with stupid background music.

so if you are someone that knows how to add a voice over and i know that you people are out there cause i have seen plenty of movies with them, i would be very thankful if you could tell me how or give me a website that has a tutorial on it.

[jpdedmon]

you're right in saying 'you people are out there'. some people who frequent this site are real artists. a couple technical things you need to keep in mind pertain to timing. a big challenge with voice-overs in flash is that the audio and video don't match up automatically. first off, you need to make sure everything is loaded before the audio or video starts. you need to make sure to use a preloader with something to look at while the user waits. second, watch out for the processor. not all users are going to be using systems that can render as well as yours. large areas changing color, or using too many vectors, or too much movement in bitmap areas can all cause the video to slow down (while the audio moves right along). a little bitmap caching and careful storyboarding can go a long way to saving you some stress.

P.S. i don't consider myself among those artists i mentioned. chris (mudbubble) georgenes and jason3d are among the members of that prestigious club. if you get advice from one of these guys, i recommend you memorize it.

[XxXdaNubXxX]

Thanks for the info that will help me, AFTER I ACTUALLY LEARN HOW TO ADD A VOICE OVER?
that is what i am really wondering how to do. I have looked on sites everywhere for tutorials but i can't find anything.
Is there some sort of special software that i need to do it, or is the stuff i need already on the computer

[jpdedmon]

everything you need should already be on your computer if you have flash (and of course a mic).

explore the 'Sound' object in the flash help files.

[XxXdaNubXxX]

I do have a mic, but i was still wondering how i make the voice over, because i haven't found a feature in flash that lets you record things like that

[jpdedmon]

you'll need to create your audio file with another app. windows and mac both come with a sound recorder. you might want to check download.com for something to clean up and edit the audio.

[Jer]

Once you record your voice with your favorite sound recording software and save it to your hard drive as a wave or mp3 and remember where you saved it, then:

1. open Flash up and open a new document.

2. on layer1 frame1, press Control r (this will open the import window)

3. locate your sound recording in this new window, and click on it and import it.

4. click on the timeline on frame1, then look at the frame properties window.

5. look at the "sound" box. It should say "none", so click on the "none" drop down and you should see your newly imported sound just below it.. so click on your sound file there.

6. By default, your sound is now active as an Event type.. Event sounds are perfect for buttons and small sound effects but are definitely NOT good for synchronizing voice! So in this same frame properties window, change the sound sync type from Event into Stream. Stream will force the animation to slow down and drop frames to keep at the same exact pace as the sound recording (which is what you need). It will only drop frames of animation if it is a much older computer or if your doing some wild and complex animations.

7. Now you should have 1 layer, 1 keyframe, and 1 sound playing on that keyframe as a Stream sync type. Without more frames, the sound will not play. So click on that frame1 on the timeline and press the F5 key many times until your sound ends. You will know when your sound ends because when you scrub the timeline, it should preview the sound to you and also on the layer, you see a line in the center that follows the sound volume levels perfectly. When that line graph of the volume level disappears, the sound is over and you wont need any more frames.

8. at that final frame, you can put a stop action to stop the animation if you only want it to play once and not repeat.

9. Now make a new layer beneath the sound layer and have fun making some animations. Since you will be synchronizing the animation with your sound recording, you will scrub the timeline to hear key moments in the sound that you want to animate.

10. If your making a cartoon in Flash, then learning to animate lip synching is a whole nother lesson and you should search these forums as I am sure someone has a good tutorial or post about it.
If its 3D that your after, Poser is a great 3D program that is both cheap and not too difficult to use with great 3D rendering ability and you can export it to Flash vector, or PNG with transparency. You would have to watch someone speak each word and figure out how to move the lips just right for each sound type.. it can take a lot of effort there to do that then render out all the sounds.. But if you had good programming skills, you could take all the basic lip movements for each speech type and then tell the lip movieclip to play the movements to create each word as it is spoken on the sound clip timeline. This is the part that takes a long long time to do it well.

11. then you have your animation perfectly synchronized and you test your movie and the sound quality of your voice sucks. Go back to the timeline and goto your publish movie settings. Check out the Flash tab and change the sound stream settings to higher quality.. keep adjusting it till your final SWF is set to the size and voice quality balance that fits your needs the best.

12. follow jpdedmon's suggestions exactly.. As he said, you will need a preloader to preload everything or else your nice movie will stutter as it loads each frame on all but the fastest internet connections. and the animation must not be too complex as he suggested or else Flash will drop and remove frames to keep up with the audio because we have the audio set for Streaming.

And thats it. Its a lot of work to undertake, especially if its a long voice over.

Jer

[XxXdaNubXxX]

Thanks a lot for that info, really, but that has just brought another question to my mind. What are some types of sound recording software?

[Jer]

I would try www.download.com and search for sound recorder. You can usually try the software for free and then buy it if you think its the one that best fits your needs. Its hard to recommend one over another because there are soo many of them out there for so many purposes.

For my purposes, I usually look for one that has unlimited length clips, many common file types to save as, import functionality, sound layering with many layers, editing ability to view the sound as a line or bar graph in very high resolution with great selection tools so that I can scrub the timeline to the exact spot where a good or bad sound is and select it and copy or delete it out. I also require stereo sound, and I like having the basic filters like fade, hiss&pop reduction, bass boost, and a nice equalizer. I like having some special filters that can speed up or slow down the recording to change the pitch.

Some other features I really dont care for include: live audio streaming server, web voice chatting server, web phone, one-step recorders that just record and dont have any advanced editing controls, exporting to unknown file formats that nobody uses, and other things.

[masada]

I happen to think that the help sections in Flash are a nightmare for beginners. Especially when it comes to actionscript. They are bland, vague and rather boring. It is clear Adobe/Macromedia does not consider the beginner much with the exception of the GUI.
The idea of syncing sound to a movie is not exactly beginner stuff, anyway. But with some trial and error you might be able to pull it off. Have a look at this tutorial here.

As far as a recorder, if you're just looking for your voice I'd start with the Window's sound recorder. It'll do the job just fine.


hope this helps.