How to enter the game industry (Part 11: sound editing and voice acting) [tutorial]

kiaazad (59)in #gaming • 7 years ago (edited)

part 1: your skills
part 2: Choosing an Engine
part 3: Ren'py Game Engine
part 4: Ren'py Scripting
part 5: Ren'py More Scripting
part 6: Ren'py Scripting, Visuals
part 7: Ren'py Scripting, Dialogue
Part 8: Ren'py Scripting, Conclusion
Part 9: Images
<< Part 10: Animation

Recently, recording sounds and voice have became so cheap that you can buy everything you need with the money in your pocket. even better news: most of you already own a device you can use to record high quality voice, so why not use them to gain some fame and fortune?

In this part I'll cover two related skills you can easily obtain and enter the market, the first is voice acting or more precisely recording your voice and the later is sound editing, each alone can be a nice addition to your resume and a fast way to fill your portfolio.

Recording

Not long ago to record good quality sound you would need some very expensive gear, microphones mixers and sound cards, even cables where pricey, but these days you can buy either a high quality voice recorder, a high quality USB microphone or use your smartphone to record at studio quality. All you'll need is a quiet neighborhood or ditching the kids at a kindergarten.

You might ask: Do i need one of those recording rooms with sponge covered walls (home studio)?
The short answer is: not really.
The long answer is: those rooms are usually made to reduce the reverb (your sound when it bounces from the walls to the microphone), have you ever had any problem hearing somebody from all of the terrible reverb while speaking on your phone? in an empty room you might hear the reverb but in your home usually all of your furniture will break the sound waves and doesn't let them bounce with full power into the microphone.
Another interesting fact is: Most of those home studios are not designed to prevent outside noise to come in, or your yelling to travel out. you can easily achieve the same effect by closing your doors and windows, draw the curtains, turn your music off and convince your neighbors to not call the police.

Now you need a microphone, before going to amazon and start buying, let's check and see if you already have a device capable of high quality recording, but first we need some numbers:
There are many arguments on the topic of sound quality. However from personal experience I can assure you that most people can't hear the difference between CD quality and all of the qualities above it. so that's our required quality. any device capable of recording sound at 44kHz 16-bit or higher should be fine.

Smartphones
Most smartphones these day are capable of recording at that quality, however, their microphone usually becomes a bottleneck. you should test your device and find out if the sound it records sounds right or not.
There are some microphones you can buy and plug into your smartphone but I suggest buying a voice recorder instead for the same price or cheaper.

pros: portable, can edit, you already have one
cons: inaccurate microphone, often mono

voice recorders
You can search "voice recorder" in your favorite online market and see a big list of them, I'll tell you the few specifications to look for and leave the choosing to you:

at least two microphones for stereo recording.
capable of recording at least "wave 24-Bit/96 kHz" or "320kbps mp3".
USB connection (can work as a USB microphone).

pros: portable, very accurate microphones, can be used as plug and play mic, often stereo or more channels
cons: non

Microphones
I don't have much experience with this one since I've gone straight to voice recorders when I switched from analogue to digital. recently I've seen some good USB microphones and people whom seemed very satisfied with them, they're often cheaper than voice recorders and easy to use, however, most of them are mono and can't record stereo. The lack of stereo can be easily fixed while editing but I personally prefer the easy way out.
While choosing a microphone to use with your computer you need to check for the same specification for voice recorders:

stereo capability if possible.
capable of recording at least "wave 24-Bit/96 kHz" or "320kbps mp3".
USB of curse.

pros: plug and play, fairly accurate, cheap
cons: needs a computer, often mono, computer noise, the cord

Noise prevention
Whichever you choose there's one challenge in front of you, these days everything around you makes noise, specially your computer and air conditioner. everything spinning makes noise and anything moving can make sounds, on top of that you need to do something about those moving cars outside. my advise is shut down everything, block every opening to outside with pillows, put the dog to sleep, put your microphone on a stand and stand up while recording.
Another source of noise is your breath impacting the microphone, if you can afford a pop filter buy one or make one out of some fabric, if you can't do either, just position your microphone slightly above your mouth and tilt your head slightly down and you'll be fine.

Sound editing

When it comes to choosing a software for editing what you have recorded there are many options with different prices,instead of listing the programs here I'll give you this list.
I'll be using Audacity because it's free and straightforward, you can choose any software you like, (some of the free ones are very good), and the basics should be the same. I believe once you learn one, you learned all.

After transferring the recorded files to your computer simply drag your file into your program:

let's first go over the basics by removing the silence at the start of this audio clip:

first you need to select the part you want to delete, to select simply click and drag:

once you selected the part there are many ways to remove it, by pressing the delete key, using cut ctrl+x, edit>delete or edit>cut menu or you can find the button somewhere on the interface.

To select more precisely you can zoom in and out on the waves, in many programs you can hold control and use mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

Hey, now we selected a part in the middle let's trim, you can select a part and remove the rest using trim:

if you didn't do a good job removing the noise while recording, the next thing you might need is removing the noise, removing the noise have to steps:
1: capturing a sample of the noise
find and select a part of the clip that is only noise, then go to effect>noise reduction...

then press get noise profile

2: removing the noise
Next select all of your clip (or the portion you want the noise removed) and go to effect>noise reduction... again, tweak the slider and preview the sound to the point that the noise is reduced and the sound is still acceptable:

keep in mind that this process will effect the sound quality, often reducing the volume as well, time to change the volume, right? there are many ways to change the volume and each software does it differently, in Audacity you can go to effect>Amplify menu and tweak the slider to get your desired volume.

Note: usually the suggested volume by the software is the loudest you can have without going out of the range (clipping)

you can also have full control over the volume for each point of your clip by using the envelops, I'll skip the explanations, try them and find out how they work, ask if you had a problem.

to save, try to save your sound file with the same quality and format as recorded or go with a high quality. like mp3 320or WAV 32-bit

As you've seen in the seventh image there are a long list of effects you can apply to your sound and not enough time to go over all of them, if you want a detailed tutorial about how to do something just ask in the comments and I'll try to make one. the same for recording via USB microphones, it should be easy to figure out but I'll go over it if there's a request.

I'm not a speaking coach but I'll leave you with one advise, mimic peoples speaking patterns loudly, it helps you create different characters and score more work in voice acting by presenting them in your demo reel.

there's no more, I am simply too busy to write the rest at the moment but you should be able to start developing your game and seek more information if necessary

#game #howto #tutorial #kia-tuts