Styles and Effects

Making computer-generated voiceovers sound more human-like involves more than just choosing the right voice. It's about understanding how to manipulate styles and effects to achieve desired results. This tutorial guides you on how to utilize styles effectively.

  1. Understanding Voice Styles Human voices have the natural ability to adjust tone and pace. By applying similar styles and effects to computer voices, they can be made to sound more human-like.

  2. Choosing Appropriate Styles for Your Content Narratives: For a company video narrative, consider styles like 'newscast' or 'documentary narration'. Voice Prompts: For a phone system, 'customer service' or 'neutral' styles work best. Dialogues: For a conversation between friends, opt for 'friendly' or 'chatty' styles. Remember, even within a single voiceover, the voice can switch between styles like transitioning from 'neutral' to 'formal' or even to 'shouting'.

  3. Identifying Voices that Support Styles While selecting a voice, look for an icon with masks. This indicates the voice supports styles. To filter only style-supporting voices, select the "Styles" filter. Hovering over the mask icon reveals all styles a voice supports. Some might have 1-2, while others offer up to 20 styles.

  4. Selecting a Voice & Setting a Primary Style Choose your preferred voice. Click on the chosen voice in your project. A window pops up displaying details: voice name, creating platform, supported effects, and styles. From here, select the primary style for the voice.

  5. Customizing Styles for Specific Paragraphs Click on the desired paragraph. Open the effects panel (look for a dark icon on the screen's right side). Choose the style you want for that paragraph. You can preview how each paragraph sounds by trying out different styles sequentially.

  6. Playing Back & Saving Your Project Click the 'Play' button in the upper right corner to listen to the entire text. If satisfied, save the audio in your preferred format.

  7. Experimentation is Key Always try different styles and voices to discover what works best for your content. To enhance realism, adjust the pitch, speed, emphasis, and try different effects and styles. Use varied styles like 'Chat', 'Angry', 'Friendly', 'Sad', 'Excited', 'Whispering', and many more to enrich your audio content.

Computer-generated voiceovers have come a long way. With the right selection and application of styles and effects, they can be made to sound incredibly lifelike. Experiment, iterate, and perfect your voiceovers to achieve the best results.