Recording a voiceover

Sometimes the narration is better recorded after the picture is cut, not during. Open the Captions tab area and find VOICEOVER, or use the voiceover control on the panel.

How it works

Choose the Microphone, press Record voiceover, and the timeline starts playing. Talk. What you say lands on the Microphone track, at the moments you said it.

Press Escape to stop. It also stops on its own at the end of the timeline.

Level shows what the microphone is hearing while you record, so you find out that the wrong device was selected before you record three minutes rather than after.

Mute timeline while recording

On by default, and it should be. Without it, the sound already on the timeline plays out of your speakers and goes straight back into the microphone.

Use headphones

The panel says so and it is the one piece of advice here that actually matters. With speakers, you are recording your own video's audio back into your voice track, and no amount of clean up afterwards untangles that.

Where it lands, exactly

The voiceover is fitted to the timeline's own clock rather than to the recording device's, which drift apart over a few minutes on most hardware. What you said at 90 seconds is at 90 seconds, and the drift over a three minute take is not something you can hear.

Overlapping

A voiceover recorded over a stretch that already has narration does not silently destroy what was there. If you want to replace a section, record over it deliberately and check the result, or delete the old clip first.

Getting it right

Record a paragraph, listen, record it again. It is much faster than trying to say three minutes perfectly in one attempt, and the timeline makes the joins invisible.