Voice-overs are a great addition to videos such as documentaries and marketing videos. However, we don't all have the talent to record a good voice-over ourselves or the budget to hire a professional voice-over artist. This is where Clipchamp's text-to-speech generator can help.
You can turn words into natural voice-over audio in a variety of accents in Clipchamp. Read our step-by-step guide below or watch this video to learn how to use this feature.
Creating text-to-speech audio
First, start editing a new video or open an existing one.
Step 1. Click "Record & create", then choose Text-to-speech.
Click the Record & create on the left sidebar. Then click the Text-to-speech button to get started.
Step 2. Choose a voice from the list and generate a preview
There are 170 unique voices to choose from, with different accents, ages, and sounds. We offer 70 languages, find the full list here.
To sample a voice, simply select one from the voice dropdown, type some text, and click the Preview button. You can also preview your voiceover by clicking on the Play button.
Step 3. Adjust punctuation to get the perfect pronunciation
You can use punctuation to make small but impactful changes to your text-to-speech delivery. Here's how it works:
Full stops. These will add a moderate pause to your text-to-speech before the next sentence begins.
Commas. A comma will add a short pause before the sentence continues.
Ellipses. Adding an ellipsis ("...") to your text-to-speech will result in a prolonged pause. The longer you make it, the longer your text-to-speech will pause.
Question marks. Ending a sentence with a question mark will change its intonation. You'll notice a rise in pitch on the last syllable of the sentence.
Exclamation marks or all caps. At this point in time, exclamation marks or typing in all caps is unlikely to affect the delivery of your text-to-speech.
Step 4. Once you're happy, click Save to media library
To add the voiceover to your project, click the Save to media button. You will automatically return to the editor.
You will find the audio file in the Your media tab.
TIP: We recommend saving the text you use to create your voiceover in a separate text document outside of Clipchamp, like a Word document. Once you've added a voice file to your video, you won't be able to retrieve the text you used to create it or change what it says. If you want to adjust it later, you can paste the text from the external document into the generator rather than having to type it out again. You can then make the changes you want and generate a new voice-over file easily.
Step 5. Add your text-to-speech audio to the timeline to edit
Once you add your voice-over files to your project, they will load in the Your media tab. Drag and drop them where you want to add audio to the timeline.
You can use the Split tool to divide text-to-speech audio files into segments and move them around individually. This can be used to add or shorten pauses or remove unwanted words or sentences for the voice-over.
Step 6. Export your video
Once you're done adding the voice-over narration and are ready to save your video, simply click the Export button in the top right corner of the editor.
