So far we’ve covered scripting, visuals and recording in this screencast tutorial.  What about the audio?  The quality of your audio really matters.  If you get your audio wrong, the perceived quality of your video will be lower than if you had reasonable audio but poor video!

“And audio has even been shown to affect the audience perception of the quality of a presentation more than the visuals.
…
So, sound has the power to raise (or lower) audience perception of visuals, but visual doesn’t have the power to change how the audience perceives the audio.” – Creating Passionate Users, January 2005

There are some basics that you can easily take care of:

• Don’t use a 3.5mm jack-plug el-cheapo mic.  The 3.5mm mic is analogue, the sound is sampled inside your computer and typically electrical noise from the motherboard is introduced into the audio.  This raises the background noise level which lowers the audio’s perceived quality.  Also – cheap mic typically have poor-quality microphone components which distort your voice
• Do use a USB mic or more expensive specialist hardware.  £40UK (approximately $60USD) USB microphones are far superior to 3.5mm mics.  Here at ProCasts HQ we use £300’s worth of sE2200A condenser mic (details below), phantom power and a FastTrack USB XLR to USB converter
• Prefer a condenser mic to a dynamic mic (note – condensors normally require their own power source and are often more expensive)
• Only ever record in a quiet room.  Background noise like birds, traffic, rain can’t really be removed.  You can try with a tool like Audacity but the general rule is that you should always start with the cleanest audio recording you can manage
• Practice your script beforehand – this way you’ll avoid ‘ums’, ‘errs’ and the like
• Do some practice recordings to check for sibilants and plosives (‘esses’ and ‘pees or bees’).  You can edit these out with an audio editor (see a demo in our Audacity screencast above) but generally you want to practice moving your mic so the source recording has the fewest number of problems
• If the plosives (above) are a problem, hear the difference in Gasto’s screencast on using a pop filter at ShowMeDo.

At the end of the day if you want really clear narration that picks up all the nuances of a human voice you do need to spend several hundred pounds on good audio equipment, or out-source the job to a professional (we can help you there).

Better mics pick up more background noise and are less forgiving of blasts of energy (e.g. from plosives) so you need an ever quieter environment and a better control over your voice.

One of my first problems when starting with professional voice recording was knowing just how ‘good’ a mic could be, if I hadn’t already bought an expensive mic?  The kind folk at TechSmith have recorded the same voice to 6 microphones of varying quality, now you can easily hear how a better mic really improves the voice recording.

• Samson C03U – $210.00 USD (MSRP)
• Lapel Microphone – $49.95 (USD)
• Logitech QuickCam Communicate Deluxe Webcam – apx $79.99 USD (MSRP)
• Blue Snowball – $99.00 USD (MSRP)
• Logitech Headset – $39.99 USD (MSRP)
• Audio-Technica AT2020USB – $249.00 USD (MSRP)

Here at ProCasts we use an sE2200A mic, this is a high-quality condenser mic that requires its own power-supply and outputs the signal to a full-size XLR connector, this is then converted to USB via a FastTrack USB device.  We also use a big stand so the mic can be positioned above the head and moved around to get the best voice quality.

Previously we’ve used a Shure SM57, and Audio Technica ATM 73a.  I found that the SM57 picked up my strong sibilants and the ATM73a recorded my voice without much range so I sounded very flat.  The sE2200A is far superior to these mics, it records my full range and doesn’t accentuate sibilants or plosives.

For further information, read David Kane’s article ISVs Are In The Business of Software, Not Audio that explains why business-owners shouldn’t try to make their own pro-audio recording.  Whilst this might feel a bit off-putting, it does explain all the complexities that you need to be aware of if you do want to get over the the hump of poor audio recordings.

The final step in this 9-part tutorial is on ways to improve the visuals of your screencast.

Do you want more of your visitors to use your software? We make professional screencasts.  Get in Contact and we’ll help you convert more visitors into users, sell more of your software and reduce your support costs.

Become a better screencaster – read The Screencasting Handbook.  We’re distilling 4 years of experience into our book, this blog series you’re reading was the first inspiration that we should write everything we know into a book to make you a better screencaster.

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Looking for a professional screen cast? Get in touch today via www.procasts.co.uk.

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