Forum Discussion
Voice-over narration for videos
I have a long elearning course with 18 videos included. For each video, I have recorded multiple short audio clips of voice-over that need to be timed to certain video cues. The videos run from 1-6 minutes each, and there are 5-25 audio clips narrating each video (so about 200 total audio clips). My question is what's the best way to add the voice-over clips:
- Add them to the videos in iMovie, and then import the videos into Storyline with the voice-over already "attached"
- Add the videos into Storyline without the voice-over, then import the audio clips into each SL timeline
I mean, it's roughly the same amount of work either way, I think. But I'm wondering before I start if there's anything I'm not considering that would make either option significantly better than the other. Thanks.
I've had pretty much this exact same situation before.
In my experience, it was a lot better to cut each video/relevant audio together in some other software (in my case I used Camtasia, not iMovie), publish that content as one video, and then import that file containing both audio and video into storyline.
I found the end content worked a lot better when it was done this way, because the audio and video was never at risk of getting out of sync due to any of the files lagging within the storyline file. Whereas if you just have one video and it lags, the audio and visual content still stays in sync.
10 Replies
I've had pretty much this exact same situation before.
In my experience, it was a lot better to cut each video/relevant audio together in some other software (in my case I used Camtasia, not iMovie), publish that content as one video, and then import that file containing both audio and video into storyline.
I found the end content worked a lot better when it was done this way, because the audio and video was never at risk of getting out of sync due to any of the files lagging within the storyline file. Whereas if you just have one video and it lags, the audio and visual content still stays in sync.
I agree with Michelle_Eire , I used a different program but had the same results. I have had the audio and video go out of sync on some slides and had a lot of work getting them back together.
Thanks, Michelle_Eire and EricSchaffer-d1. I appreciate the responses. One concern I have with doing all the compilation outside of SL is that SL automatically compresses the video, which means if you have embedded audio it will compress that audio too. And I want that audio to play at the same level as the rest of my voice-over narration. Can I get around that by setting the compression to None? Or does that open up other cans of inconvenient worms?
I don't remember this being an issue for me to be honest, so I can't speak to it. The best thing to do is to create one video with embedded audio as a prototype and see what the audio levels are like when it's placed into your course.
I would agree with Michelle_Eire . I worked on a presentation that had over 35 videos with the longest 1 hour and I had no issues.
Thanks EricSchaffer-d1 and Michelle_Eire. Everything working fine so far, except SL keeps crashing when I try to add my videos to the media library. So I gave up and am just grabbing them from the hard drive. That ever happened to you, and did you ever find a fix for it?
Hi ryardumian_pdx!
Great to see the community has been helping you!
I'm sorry to hear that Storyline is crashing when adding videos to your Media Library. That shouldn't be happening! Do the crashes occur with a specific media file, or across all files you attempt to add? Also, are you receiving any error messages after the crash?
If a repair of your Storyline installation doesn't improve the issue, please connect with our team privately through a support case.
They'd be happy to continue troubleshooting with you!
I do find in general that 360 is more prone to a random crash when my .story files get very large (which happens quickly when adding video files). I adjusted the autosave frequency to every 5 minutes to minimize the amount of work lost.
SL360 crashes all the time when I try adding or adjusting things. I send in the reports but no answers. I just save everything a lot.
Hi EricSchaffer-d1!
Sorry to hear you've also been facing frequent crashes in Storyline!
If this behavior pops up for you again, and you're already working locally, please try a repair of your Storyline installation. If that doesn't do trick, our support engineers are always happy to help troubleshoot with your further.
Feel free to connect with them privately through a support case.
