Steve King
Forum Replies Created
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My take on your question is based on over thirty years as a free-lance SAG/AFTRA voice and on-camera actor. For the past 20 years I’ve also written and directed corporate video from long form documentaries to 30 second web ads. So, to answer your question, voice over actors and narrators typically charge by the job with a very wide range of fees from as low as $25 for a one hour recording session to many hundreds of dollars for that same service. As a narrator, I am not the most expensive guy on the block, but I charge in the $500 range for a typical corporate narration. What? Why would anybody pay that much? With my producer’s hat on I can explain why I pay that much and more to the actors I hire. There are thousands of script readers out there who charge less, but there are relatively few real story tellers. I want story tellers who can keep an audience, typically my clients’ customers or my clients’ employees, fully engaged in the video from start to finish. Who can quickly adapt to different video styles and different types of viewers. Who can look at a script for a few minutes and just know how to make it interesting. Who know how to make complex ideas clear. Who know how to show me different ‘characters’until I hear one that makes my video come alive, makes my clients say, “that guy sounds like our best sales people.” I want a narrator that quickly can find a way to express the pride in product or service that the owners or upper management of companies themselves feel. And, who will give me a read that doesn’t cost me hours in audio editing to try to stitch together dozens of takes to get a finished track. When I do a good job of casting, when my clients hear their story and say, “Wow!”, the narrator’s fee is a non-issue, typically never even discussed. I can find ways on the production side that allow me to hire the right voice actor and still meet the budget.
Steve K
Full time writer/director
Pt. Time Video Editor -
I export the Power Point slides as individual PNG images. That of course does not provide the animations that may be done with text and or images that the Power Point author may have incorporated. When those animations are important, I have used a screen capture software to grab those slides with animation individually. Those captures typically do not have the crispness particularly in the text that the exported PNG files do. After some explanation my clients accept that being it is what it is. I do use Sony sharpen occasionally. All that said, depending on the content of the slides I often shoot presenter with camera 1 and shoot the slides displayed on a 27 inch monitor that is fed in parallel with the VGA signal going to the overhead projector. I have tried using screen capture software to capture the image on the monitor, but I find that the camera image is more reliable than the screen capture software. The result is that I have a video that can be synced with the presenter’s camera track. Then I either cut back and forth as appropriate, or if the client prefers I devote about the left third of the image to the presenter and the right 2/3rds to slides. That is certainly the least time consuming approach. All in all videos of Power Points and presenters are not my favorite way to create effective training, but we do what the client wants and wants to pay for.
Steve K
Full time writer/director
Pt. Time Video Editor -
I watched the video. Sound is okay. There is a short section of music at the beginning and the end. When you say it works for a few hours, what do you mean by that? Do you play it looped? Or? And, is it the YouTube playback or the playback on your phone that you have a problem with?
Steve K
Full time writer/director
Pt. Time Video Editor -
Many thanks, John. Is there a conversion formula?
Steve K
Full time writer/director
Pt. Time Video Editor -
Problem solved. Divide RGB value by 256 for the fractional decimal value Vegas uses. Thanks.
Steve K
Full time writer/director
Pt. Time Video Editor -
I have a Sapphire R9 280x running three monitors. I like it a lot. I do 1920×1080 29.97 HD most of the time. Preview Best-Full at full frame rate. No 2k or 4k, so I can’t comment on that. On my card the trick to get 3 monitors running was (1) DVI (2)HDMI (3)Display port through an active adapter to HDMI. Also happy with render times for Sony AVC/MVC MP4 file output.
Steve K
Full time writer/director
Pt. Time Video Editor -
I use a Sapphire R9 280x. Very happy with it. Running three monitors: Dell 27″, Asus 24″, and Sony Bravia HDTV 40″. CPU is i7 5930K @ 3.4 ghz. No overclocking on either the CPU or the graphics card.
Steve K
Full time writer/director
Pt. Time Video Editor -
Yeah, Grazie. Don’t tell me what I don’t want to know, and its on you to know what that is. So there;-)
Steve K
Full time writer/director
Pt. Time Video Editor -
Audition 1.5, 2.0, and 3.0 all have a pretty good restoration tool for clipping. Depends on the severity of the clipping of course. But Audition has saved my bacon a few times with customer supplied tracks.
Steve K
Full time writer/director
Pt. Time Video Editor -
I’m getting excellent results with the older, slightly less expensive Sapphire R9 280x.
Steve
Steve K
Full time writer/director
Pt. Time Video Editor