 Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk Tech talk tech. Oh, yeah, I was supposed to make echo sounds with my face. Tech talk. Tech talk. And it's tech talk number 91 Believe it or not, 91 episodes jam-packed with more tech information than you would ever possibly need to know so Hold on one second. Hopefully some of it's useful, too. Yeah, really Yeah, most most of I think people find pretty useful anyway, but we're gonna have some tech talk and we've got Demonstrations and of course your questions which you can ask like if you were joining us with the Johnny Heller last week You can ask them live in our chat room whether you're on Facebook or on YouTube and George and I will answer those questions about the Amazing a variety of things that can go wrong or that you want to know about when it comes to home voiceover studio audio Are we ready? Let's do this. It's time for voiceover body shop tech talk right now Tech talk Brought to you by voiceover essentials.com the home of Harlan Hogan signature products source elements the makers of source connect Voiceover heroes become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training Voice actor websites.com where your voice actor website doesn't have to be a pain in the butt voiceover extra your daily resource for voiceover success and world voices the industry association of freelance voice talent and Now here's your hosts Dan and George. Ah, yes Hi, I'm Jan Leonard and I'm George with him and this is voiceover body shot or VO Be as tech talk. Oh, tech. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Tech talk well You got to know something about the voiceover business and that is that Most people don't understand the technology at all. We had Johnny Heller on last week I don't know any of this stuff and this guy is like a superstar in the in the voiceover world and especially in the audiobook world Yeah, I don't know any of this stuff. It's like I Think the majority George don't know exactly what's going on because they're like I want to be an actor I want to be a voice actor. I want to do all this great stuff But I gotta have all this tech and it's not really rocket science but it's just overwhelming the the sources of information people are getting are Very confusing sometimes conflicting Sometimes just dead act dead dead dead on wrong wrong and it's very challenging. That's and that's the problem We will not make it challenging for you. We will Demystify and simplify and get you to the answers you need fast. So you don't get stupefied Yeah, it's there's a lot of stuff. You got to know fortunately There are those of us that actually know exactly what it's supposed to sound like and how to produce that sound in your home voiceover studio And that's what George and I do almost full-time. I'm still a voice actor and I'm still president of wobo and all these other things that I do but I Really enjoy doing all the tech stuff and George does it full-time and it's what he lives It's what he bleeds When he when he goes rolling down a hill on his bike and falls off it bleeds voice over a technology If they want to work with you George, where do they go and they're gonna go over to George the dot tech And that's my world for voiceover technology support free Information lots and lots of free resources and ways to hire us for tech support on-demand or Offline like just maybe a plain old sound check where I listen to your audio and give you notes about Technical issues, which is really the cornerstone of what we do Dan You do the same thing basically right over at home voiceover studio calm and Yeah, if you go there you find my specimen collection cup and I will listen to your audio for $25 and I will give you a very thorough analysis Of how to do that plus if you do a consultation with me a full hour and a half You'll get more than just voiceover tech I will teach you the basics of how to get it done how to get it done right and then I'll throw something else in there that people Will like oh, I hadn't thought about that Because I've met a lot of interesting people doing a lot of interesting stuff who want to get into voiceover And it's like well what were you doing before and you know that sort of thing and we got into some very Interesting conversations that will help you push your career forwards to go on over to home voiceover studio calm and Check out the services that that I offer over there Well, I have to start off our tech segment with a poem. Oh Believe it or not now there was an issue that that came up over the weekend while we were all Digesting, you know left over Turkey and it was someone named Julie had a problem with twisted wave and She contacted everybody But she was panicking. Yeah, she was really panicking, but she wrote this very interesting poem which I promised her I would read on the show cool. It says thanks for the giving Twas two days past post turkey when I in my booth went to save as like I usually do This pop-up continued denying my save regardless of dozens attempts that I made I panicked Inhaled and said hey, okay, man. Chill the fuck out and write anyone you can On hi on Highland, Jen Henry on JMC to on Facebook on YouTube. What else can I do? Email Dan Leonard, which he did search troubleshoot galore move on to Jim Edgar who might not been before Brad found Uncle Roy who gracefully called Removed my software and then reinstalled Try now uncle Roy said to V. O. God's I prayed then yelling with joy. It worked It is saved But then later on other meals emails came through trying to help seeing what they could do Dan Leonard Jim Edgar these guys wrote me back just two days post turkey to the their day-to-chill acts Twisted wave themselves wrote me about a bug that was stinging us waivers, but now taken care of Why all these people will so willing in kind jumping to help me not lose my mind It's just like I've heard about VO peeps. They're nice and they care in bounds and in leaps Can't thank you enough each giver of time of knowledge of context. Hey this thing rhymes You peeps out there doing VO for a living. Thank you for caring and thanks for giving Wow I gotta read that on the show. Yeah, it's fantastic that covers one of my stories, too That I know well that was part of the story about the problem with twisted wave But thanks to Julie Savateer for that. I really appreciate that. So what do you got in your update this week? Well, I thought I would start with a quick little show in a here-and-tell actually and let you hear it So, you know the new technology this year to me has really been anything relating to using any AI Systems and so AI is just such a buzzword now, right? But it's basically Machine learning which means that you're using computers to Learn patterns learn things in the way a sort of more like a person would like. Oh, I've heard that before that's familiar to me as opposed to Just looking at, you know, well the sounds louder than this threshold. So I will do this AI right so there are a lot of tools now that use AI They may not promote heavily using the buzzwords AI, but they're being used behind the scenes on different levels And so I thought I would just compare some sound samples using these tools to remove noise, right? The number one thing we all shutter about in a home studio is noise. So first I captured some audio in a typical fashion here in Venice where I live of the Effing airplanes that fly over and I'm not going to play the entire minute and a half long Sample because that's literally how long it took for this stupid Small aircraft to clear but here is here's what it sounded like in the raw form and by the way Just for fun. I started off the sample with the sound of me slamming my office door, okay? So this is I'll play like 10 to 20 seconds here. Here we go Here's what the raw audio sounded like and just because I can I'll let you see what it actually looks like on screen at the same Time, okay, so here's the beginning sample. Let's just play the beginning and here we go I'll turn off my mic so you don't hear any other room noise Let's make some random noises All right, this is most actors worst nightmare Small aircraft noise flying overhead Obviously completely ruining a take Unless you have extract dialogue by a condigital or clarity waves vx You decide which one does a better job Get the idea that plane goes on for a minute and a half right while I sit here fuming about it Okay, so I've got three tools. I was I just did two and then I threw last one in just to see I used a con which is spelled a co n Extract colon dialogue. That's the name of the plug-ins catchy, right? I used a condigital extract digital extract dialogue. I used waves clarity vx which you know, I know you've heard me talk about on the show and I used isotope rx-9's music rebalance Which it didn't even occur to me to think to use it like this But somebody else pointed out that you could use it to extract dialogue from a mix or and this is Case from noise so I tried all three including with the door slam to see what it would do with that. Well, here's the first Let's say 20 seconds same mouse same amount of time using these three different tools So first is using a con extract dialogue random noises So you remember right before I said that I slammed my office door So a con just completely removed the door slam 100% okay. Here's my dialogue Alright, this is most actors worst nightmare small aircraft noise flying overhead Obviously completely ruining a take Unless you have extract dialogue by a condigital or clarity waves vx Pretty good, but I'm still picking up some hints of their plane is in there It's kind of like at the end of the word when it when the gate I call it a gate That's not really what it is, but it's when it releases the processing is where you should really pick up on it, right? So I thought okay, that's cool. I'd never use the tool before well Let's compare to what I thought was really the ultimate tool for this kind of stuff. This is now waves clarity vx Make some random noises So the door sound the door shutting was just like a click. Yeah All right, this is most actors worst nightmare small aircraft noise flying overhead Obviously completely ruining a take Unless you have extract dialogue by a condigital or clarity waves vx You decide which one does a better job Now that one was interesting because it got progressively better over time, right? I noticed that sort of as it learned my voice pattern and kind of like started getting better and better So, you know theoretically by the end it would be even better Let's see if jumped and jumping to the end here a full minute and a half later. I can still hear the plane All right, it slowed down. It's it's now leveled. So now it's cool Okay, so and that and that's by the way, I should have told you I maxed out the settings on these things, right? So normally, you know Artifacts would be a really a big problem, right? You'd hear all kinds of weird Sphooshing and waterfall effects and stuff. I had these all the way turned up to see what they can do All right, now we'll try rebalance. Remember this is designed to separate out say vocals from drums and Bass and other instruments, right? So let's see what it does with this in this experiment Just make some random noises That was the weird weird sound that the door made so you'll hear my voice Alright, this is most actors worst nightmare Small aircraft noise flying overhead Obviously completely ruining a take Unless you have extract dialogue by a condigital So the takeaway there is that that gave you all of the weird artifacts and the airplane sound So that didn't work at all. So I don't know whoever's recommended that to me as a tool. It's definitely not What it's all that it's cracked up to be so as I guess the point of this experiment is to show you that one Nothing beats soundproofing the correct way because all of these tools did varying degrees of you know a decent job They can they have somewhat unpredictable results Because it's AI and not just algorithms. Sometimes they behave differently Based on the situation. So it's a little bit less predictable what they're going to do But I was surprised I thought a con extract dialogue was pretty darn strong for a tool That's not really been talked about very much. So I just wanted to shine a little light on them And you know let people know that's another one to try and as always do not buy any of these without trying a demo first and Of course, all of them they have deals that end basically today So as soon as the show is over you want to go play around with these and then and then commit to buying one of them Because they all have deals, right? Yeah, so that's a just to review that's a con extract dialogue Waves clarity vx, which has basically been 40 bucks almost all year and Isotopes Rx which now is version 10 And that's music rebalance. It's just part of the Rx suite Another thing so I've been having some major instability instability issues with my Mac mini which was running on big sir for a very very long time and as I told a million people over and over don't upgrade unless you have a reason There was a reason it was funny. It was trying to drive me crazy certain apps would crash when I quit them Others would crash at random In fact, one of them still is a month many cam crashed during the first half of the show tonight But a lot of things got better after this upgrade and what I did is I took my Mac mini from big sir to Monterey No, I did not go to Ventura I've heard a lot of good things, but I'm still not going that step to the current OS The reason is now because I'm on my mentor mentor a mentor now. I'm on Monterey It's just combined only now that I'm on Monterey I am on the last theoretically the last update of Monterey. There's going to be I'm on 12.6.1 So that means it shouldn't have any surprises. It's it's a stable state It's had all of its updates and it seems to have been other than many cam Which I'm still waiting for their support team to get back to me and tell me why it crashes three weeks later It's it's the only thing that's giving me trouble everything else all the other little Quirky glitchy weird things it would crash over the week over the weekend for no reason Just all this weird stuff all gone So if you're on big sir or any over OS and you do have like random problems that just like and they're like telling you Oh, try this try that. Maybe that is a good time to upgrade to the next OS So just in my case it did work out. Well, I had backups of everything. I knew all my stuff was gonna still work on Monterey I did my research But it does weren't run better afterward. Yeah, I tend to trust the updates no matter what because I'm all the way on Ventura Yeah, what I have found is some programs have not caught up with like what oh You know some video programs things. Yeah, you know some screen for programs Yeah, and it will you can see what's going on. It's like taking it a little bit longer You'll get a little bit of a beach ball and then they'll start working So I think that Rosetta is you know still part of this and it's still it takes it a little while to learn it And then it starts running it much more efficiently. So you just have to be a little patient with it Yeah, when I load that clarity plug in that's about the only time I see a beach ball on my computer when it look when I load that clarity plug in I see a little pinwheel for about three or four seconds. All right, but that cuts into your next thing here So on Ventura, yeah, well, um, well venture again, you know I'm I have heard from Dan and I've heard from many others that have had very good luck with Ventura all of those people were already running Monterey and All of them are running an M1 or silicon based Mac So they're all in very modern systems and I think for those people Ventura is working fine and probably for me it might work fine and it might work fine for you It's still that thing of me not wanting to have software that will update tomorrow or in a month or create a new variable, right? So I think Ventura is probably just Monterey with a bunch of new bug fixes and you know, things like this So it's probably just even theoretically even more stable But it's still I don't want to have surprises and on a workstation that I rely on day in day out Um twisted wave 28 that was the one that the poem was essentially talking about when twisted wave 28 came out There was an issue with the app store version and here's a little thing about app store versions of apps It's not saying it's bad across the board certain things. It's nice You get five installs of the app over five different computers It's a good value in the case of twisted wave. It's not a good value and here's why Once you buy the twisted wave license from twistedwave.com It lasts forever. I am using it's eternal. I have a 2007 license of twisted wave And it still works on every computer. So that's one reason not to another reason too is you're taking money out of the Pocket of the developer. So You know apple's going to get 30% of anything you buy from the app store and that doesn't go to the developer So there's another reason so three is something called sandboxing Sandboxing is something apple does to protect you From software becoming rogue or becoming a virus and yes, there is some truth to that But it does create new headaches for the developer and that's what essentially was causing the saving issue Because twisted wave could not access the file system when you went to save that new recording It was stuck in limbo and you couldn't do anything and it was because of a bug With the app store version only so there's a reason to probably stick with the regular version And and even twisted wave isn't impervious to bugs Don't upgrade it if it's running perfectly keep it running on the version You currently have and stay tuned to us if there's something new we'll let you know if it's totally worth Upgrading to um two more quickie things twisted wave as well has a beta for windows And they keep adding features and now I understand it now can support vst plugins So the next thing will be can we make stacks? For windows version of twisted wave that's something I haven't gotten to experiment with but I will I'm sure in the next couple of months And lastly just a tool that I've been using more and more often It's called remote mouse and keyboard and it's an app I run on my ipad And the beauty of it is it's a remote desktop tool For your own computer. So if you want to for example control My mac mini I touched my mac mini it detects it now right now This screen is acting like a trackpad. That's it. It's moving the mouse around the screen exactly like a trackpad If I touch the display button Now it's actually which I know you can't see on camera now. It's actually a remote desktop of There it is my actual computer and I can move seamlessly between my two displays And I can do it on my screen and I can do it So it it's an amazing tool I mean if you want to go into your booth But not have to have a keyboard monitor mouse in there and all the wiring involved This app is awesome. It's been very stable It seems to work beautifully and once you get used to the user interface because basically the screen Of your ipad is now a trackpad, right? So it's a little weird You're like you're moving your finger around the screen, but the pointer is somewhere else You know, here's the pointer over here once you get used to it It works really really well. So that's and again, that's called remote mouse and keyboard Um, and it's a great it's a great little app and I found it when I wanted to be able to have my daughter in the booth And and not have to be in there messing with stuff I wanted to be able to just remote control what she's doing and it's it's working beautifully for that Outstanding. Yeah, I mean, I just love my magic mouse. It just makes life Super duper easy when you're editing, which is what I want to talk about tonight But I also want to remind you that if you've got a question for us about your home voiceover studio Whether it's equipment or a problem or something you've wanted to know Throw it in the chat room right now because jeff holman is like chomping at the bit to Take down your questions and send them to us and we'll get to those in just a little bit That's right. Uh, so uh, whether you're on facebook or whether you're on youtube Just type type it in the chat room there and we will get to your question in a little bit Well, I needed to do a little demonstration because when I'm working with people a lot of people They're not familiar with editing and if you can't edit voiceover it can be Kind of tricky, uh And there there's so many different apps, you know, you you know, we have twisted wave We have adobe audition we some some use pro tools for whatever reason Uh, and there's there's other programs out there Reaper and uh in studio want there's there's all sorts and you know for all sorts of platforms When it comes to editing You have to think like an editor when you're recording and one of the ways you do that is having yourself a process for when you make a mistake and some people like well, I just use uh, you know, um Punch and roll and go back Punch and roll is okay. If you're you know, if you're doing audiobooks and stuff like that You still got to go back and clean it up But when you're editing when you're recording One of the things you you should probably not do if you make a mistake is to stop and Hit you know hit stop and record and then have to start all over again and recording again Twisted wave is great because it allows you to you can do all sorts of drop edits and stuff like that But I wanted to show you something tonight that is Something perhaps you didn't even think about but if you edit properly you can literally edit in the middle of a word and make it sound like You know there was never an edit there and that's the real key to great editing is Making it totally transparent. George and I talk about this all the time with your processing and all these other things If they don't know They don't know so I'm gonna I'm gonna open up twisted wave here And there the edits should disappear to the listener. You should have no clue No, and I'm gonna show you how to do that You know very precisely So I'm gonna read a little copy here and I'm gonna make some mistakes And then I'm gonna show you the real trick to editing this so it sounds like nothing ever happened Okay, so all I have to do with this is I have to like hit record. Don't I okay? I'm going to hit record and now we're recording in twisted wave and I have some copy here and it goes Companies can no longer afford to be reactive across all industries organizations rely on the uptime And there I go up or you can use a a clicker something like that, but I usually go Uh, and then you go back a little bit in the sentence it goes, um Uh Organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable Equipment to be as productive and reliable is possible. Okay. That's a very short demonstration of that But okay back in the twisted wave here. Okay Hit stop so There's a lot of stuff you can see here, but if you give yourself visual cues to edit It you can go back and very quickly realize where you made a mistake And if there's no mark after it you realize that Yeah, there's no mistake after that until you see the next line like right here But you can literally edit between in the middle of a word as long as you edit on a Consonant a t a p a k a b Reason for that is those consonants start with a very sharp beginning So as we go back and listen to this and hopefully you can hear it Okay, so I made this noise here Or you can use a a clicker and you have something like that, but I usually go Uh, and then you go back a little bit in the sentence it goes, um Uh organizations rely on the uptime of there. There's a t time And we know that I made the mistake back here Uh organizations rely on the uptime of there's the t and the mistake was made here. I believe It's relying the uptime of there's the t right there So you can literally go back a number of times until you say it right But in the middle of a word It now sounds like across all industries organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable Equipment to be as productive and reliable is possible. There's a p as productive Productive and we find the p over here Equipment to be as there's the p right there And now the whole sentence is companies can no longer afford to be reactive Across all industries organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable is possible And that's that's the name of that tune Yeah, it editing is like it's one of those things where if you do it Well, I don't know. There's some cases where it's like editing Takes more time than voicing it correctly But there's a certain point where you're doing long long form stuff And revoicing a whole section just to fix one mistake may not make mistake make sense. So Having good editing chops is going to make you way more efficient. You're going to work much faster Yeah, and you know and having been an editor since The nixon administration You know, and I learned how to edit, you know, unreal to real tape with a razor blade and grease pen and all that kind of stuff So this is like drawing with crayons because you can literally see Where the audio is and if you edit on a consonant It it just makes it totally totally seamless because everybody's like I just got to re-do the whole sentence Well, maybe you didn't like the way you did that sentence Which is the whole thing my whole philosophy with editing and why you don't Stop I mean if you make a mistake you go back to the the beginning of the the sentence again But you don't hit the stop button then try and come back So that's that's a really important thing you've got to understand that uh Editing is it you've got to be able to repeat and understand The natural flow of human speech There are some people like I they just sort of butt things together and make sure that You know that everything's in there and fits in the time frame But you've got to have the human pauses in there and it's really really important to understand that process And of course I can you know in in any session that I'm teaching on this I can teach you a little bit more about some of these things, but that's one of my favorites is always edit on a hard consonant Uh, and try not to begin every sentence talking a little bit louder Yeah, you know the the william shatner effect Uh, I find people tend to do that an awful lot. They get in front of a microphone. It's like oh, I'm beginning a sentence Okay, I am beginning a second. They just just trails off. So yeah, uh So that's my editing tip for now And uh, and now we're going to go to your questions in just a little bit here And if you have those questions Put them in the chat room right now because we want to answer your questions on home voiceover studios Whether it's about equipment whether it's about technique Whether it's about processing whether it's about whether to process or not Any question you have please throw it in the chat room right now and we will get to it in just a little bit So anyway, we're going to take a break and we'll be right back here on voiceover body shop tech talk Right after these messages This is ariana rattner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv It's the holiday season and if you're a voice talent Not everyone in your family or close friends really understands what you want for your home voiceover studio You want a what? Well voiceover essentials dot com has the perfect solution the voiceover essentials gift card It's the perfect answer when you get that you want a what question You pick the amount you want to give and they take care of the rest The recipient will receive their digital gift card and a gift code to use for anything they offer at voiceover essentials dot com Like the harlin hogan vo1a microphone the portabouth pro or plus harlin hogan signature series voiceover optimized headphones A lot of what go to voiceover essentials dot com and click on shop and gift cards and choose the amount Give them or give yourself the gift of getting exactly what you want gift cards now at voiceover essentials dot com Thanks harlin There are two things that i love about teaching voice talent to add audiobook narration To their tool belt Via a course that i teach with dano day called the acx master class The first one is the success That our students have over 5000 books Available for sale right now on audible from our students alone That's the first thing that i love the second thing that i love is saving people money And during this week only we're offering a three payment plan no interest no fees The lowest price anybody will pay for the course will do the course right after the first of the year But if you start this week you can make three quick payments easy on your pocket book and off to the races we go If you want details go to acx masterclass dot com. That's acx masterclass dot com Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great I gotta swear there's supposed to be a source element spot in there somewhere Take it away tell us about source elements and source i will i will i will um So source elements, you know, you've heard me talk about them ad nauseam on the show They're a great sponsor a long time sponsor I bet you didn't know that they have an academy You didn't know that probably um, but they do and they do they're doing a lot more training now In house than they used to Um and you can really learn a lot now most of what they're teaching obviously is directly related to their You know the services and softwares that they sell Um, but for example, there's a four lesson class called advanced remote recording Um, so if you find yourself in a role where you're going to be recording Somebody else do the voice acting a tool a course like that could be extremely useful You'll feel way more understanding of the ins and outs of making that work Or maybe you just want to be way more Comfortable with source connect the software the one that most voice actors are probably going to have in their studio to connect to other studios Well, you can get up to speed with a five lesson Course on source connect 3.9 75 bucks for a five lesson course. It's pretty cool. There's 21 cruet quizzes You get a course certificate which obviously you could share on your website and um, it's a great It's a great way to just become way more Comfortable with the tools that you use not just somebody who knows what it is and knows if you click here Something happens feel like you're a little bit more empowered to understand the tools that you use so Thanks so much source elements. Thanks for supporting us And thanks now for supplying the tools and the training people really need to get better at this stuff We'll be right back and here we are we can go right back into the show because we already we already did that I'm like a programmed robot. Sometimes I just go into old habits So we're in the question zone. What do we have coming in for questions? We got a couple of questions here Um, grace newton starts off with I've been avoiding updating my mac book air m1 What should I be prepared for when I do? Well, uh, because I just did it myself Yeah, I kind of just talked about it, but I mean, what did you do to prepare anything special or just time machine back? Uh, I don't do any of that stuff. I trust max They never never screw up on me except for the one time when I was trying to erase a hard drive when I wanted to sell the uh the old the old mac book we had and And it blew out one of something and then that cost a lot to fix it Which is the first time I've ever had that problem with the mac, but uh, you know things happen I'd say if you're going to upgrade to uh, to the new one, which is ventura Uh, be prepared for like I said for a couple of delays maybe with some programs You know the thing with twisted wave over the weekend Of course, I was like what there's a problem with twisted wave and it turns out well It was just like you said it was because of the the app store version of that um, you know, I I You know, I upgraded to ventura tried everything and It always works, you know, I've never really had a problem I think I probably had more problems when I'm upgrading Uh the os on my phone more than anything else Uh, the things stop working and the developers are like what they changed the os on the phone It doesn't work and you'll try and tap it and it goes And then it just stops yeah, yeah something along those lines, but you know for the most part the uh You know, I I find that you you shouldn't have to worry about too many things, you know, be patient Eventually the the apps that you're going to have You know that work on a mac Are going to adapt and they will they will work But this program that we keep talking about rosetta that allows You know the computer to interpret old old programs To run on a new system, uh, it works pretty well But sometimes it takes just a second or two for it to to kick in but I think that's what's probably going on I mean if you're already on an m1 machine upgrading to a new os should be pretty much Problem-free like it should be Um, if you're upgrading from older os's jumping forward to two generations or three or four That I probably wouldn't recommend. I I don't think I would be going to the newest things on an older machine But because These new os's were written natively to run on these newer computers like the m1 mac You should have a lot fewer issues. So um, just be backed up, you know, like we all just said and said again Have backup Make sure you're backed up. Make sure you know that everything you're running is going to run on that new System if you're really geeky you can make an image or whatever We call it of the drive and have a second copy of your whole system I've known people that go to great lengths to do things like this. I used to I don't anymore Um, there's so few things that go wrong Um, once you're within a certain generation of os so yeah If you're really worried book a session with dan or I will will hold your hand and we'll make sure you don't make big gross mistakes Yeah, really, uh, yeah, I you know, I back up everything Data-wise, I mean, you know, I've got a five terabyte drive here Then I've loaded everything that's about every computer I've had since like 1997 on there and it's only like, you know It's hardly it's hardly breaking a sweat. I mean, it just has lots of room So it's much easier to just take everything Dump it on to a solid state drive or or you know a a large, you know an eight terabyte drive or a five or something like that And everything is there just keep things organized and know where certain things are. Okay Here's all my sound files from here and here's all my my video files and here's all my Documents and here's all and you and you keep putting it in your hard drive, you know, there's there's time machine Which is also very useful But I find just saving the data Of old productions and stuff like that is really all you need. I mean if something comes up And you have a client that's like remember that spot you ran last year can we need to update it? But just with a tag or something. Do you have the old spot and like There it is And uh, and that makes it nice to be able to say yes Absolutely. Absolutely. What I really like though is when a client emails me and said We're renewing that spot for another in Norway for another year You know, can we do that for another year and you know, and here's how much it I'm like, yeah Here Fine no problem I'll be happy to do that and and send you an invoice but I don't have to re-voice it at all And that was a strange spot for a Norwegian company, but Work is work Anyway, uh question for you from ap white watts Okay, hi ap Um asking how am I enjoying the studio bricks booth and is it fairly soundproof fairly soundproof? It's fairly soundproof. Yeah I mean, it's it's much much better than my office With airplanes like if if I had something mission critical to record Um, I would be in there in a heartbeat Um, I actually I was recently interviewed and is now released on jmc j michael collins's podcast I was interviewed on j michael collins podcast and I recorded in the studio bricks booth Um, I know sounds ridiculous that I don't record in there often Folks, I don't record much. I'm I'm I'm a You're not a voice actor for crying out loud. I'm not a voice that but I decided I'll record um The interview in there and I had no Zero interruptions throughout that our 40 minute long Thing like we have constant aircraft here vehicles passing by gardeners I had absolutely no cause or to think to pause or stop talking ever never had an interruption So yes, it has uh worked out very nicely. It is Pretty soundproof. I would say it's better than the Average it's certainly better than any double. I'm sorry. It's better than any single wall Constructed booths like a standard whisper room Um, it is better than most other booths I've ever heard And I'm very blessed to have it and my daughter is the one who's really going to be doing the most recording in there once we start auditioning she's coaching right now with our dear friend martha kahn who isn't excellent Excellent children's voiceover coach. She's highly hired. Yeah, she's so great and My daughter is the one who's really going to be doing the lion's share of recording in there although My friend our friend eddie eddie whenever we do a workout together with my daughter and his kids He's like george now. Why don't you read on something man? He's like Man, you need to be doing this. I don't just like all right. I'm I'm I'm biding my time I'm not ready. I don't not really distract from everything else going on in my life I'm not ready to dabble in voiceover, but um, yeah, the booth is mostly going to be used by Um, my daughter when we really start getting serious about auditioning Yeah, that's great to hear uh, somebody was asking about where do you get? A clicker Yeah, you can get I mean you can probably get them at a pet store. Of course we this this one was This was the old voiceover button. Oh, this was an east west audio body shop clicker Oh, wow that we had that's I've worn it out because I've I've used it so much on you know long presentations You break them up into slides and stuff That's another thing I could show you is how to break up things into slides On untwisted wave or an adobe audition, but these are great more dan keep one more next time next time. Yeah, that's right Uh, you know, it's great because it gives you a great audio Physical audio cue that you can see right Um, you know, we had these and we we we gave them away or I think we sold them for like 75 cents or something I can't remember what we sold them for but every time somebody from canada wanted one I had to fill out an import form To mail to mail this thing Because these are clearly a threat to canadian national security Or their gmp or something or something like that. What's coming from america canadian should be making these things more canadian content Can con as they call it Look guys up in toronto are going Anyway, these are really nice to have but You don't have to use a clicker like I said you can always go or or Something along those lines That's going to give you the visual cue you need to edit with properly so We'll go with that so that you get these anywhere. Yeah, I mean, I know there's marker You can make m be the marker button and make a marker in the file But I don't know if you don't want to have a keyboard in your booth You want to just be at the mic not having any extra gadgets and just this is so easy to have Yeah, it's very very practical Yeah, uh, let's see here, uh, jeff asks Last week if you were here last week, uh, johnny how heller said a two-to-one ratio of booth work to finished hour is standard Dan that would be me. Are you at that level and how much extra time do you put in for book prep? Well, I haven't done any audiobooks in about 10 years Uh, to me it was high effort Low reward and the reward was getting lower and lower and lower and You know and I and I did stuff for some some big publishers and I must say And I always like to say that acx buys me lunch every month You know, but just for me You know, it's oh, I can go to wendy's now and you know and you know that sort of thing I I did like 40 titles and uh, you know a lot of it was for Uh, you know just you know an upfront payment and stuff like that But the stuff that I had on royalty Uh still is and there were a couple of very good books won by eric funer. Who's a well-known, uh, Historical novelist actually he's a historian and it's actually a true historical narrative and I and I did that That's still that's still selling. Well, there's also one I did on philosophy, which I did not understand one bit Uh, but apparently I must have read it right because that one keeps selling that was a very popular book and So, you know, that probably sells 10 15 copies a month, which is fine and dandy But of course if you have a lot of those in royalty They are they're going to you know, it's like an annuity as we as we used to say in the insurance business Yeah, it will it will continue to accumulate as long as people are buying that book But as far as a two-to-one ratio, you know, I got it down to where I was much faster than that I mean, you know, I maybe when I started it might have been three to one But I'm you know, I'm an editor by you know by trade and that's Something I just do incredibly fast because of the techniques that I use And things like that and the codes that I use okay If I go that means go back to the beginning of a paragraph if I go Okay, she's made a mistake in this word go back and just fix that word You know read the beginning of the phrase of that sentence again because I don't want to spend a lot of time going back And and and redoing an entire sentence Uh, and I find that you know because of those this tricks that I use I can go through it very very quickly A twisted wave is great for for long-format narration. Really easy to do drop-in edits You know, if you have corrections or something along those lines and the The producer says well, you made a mistake here or this needs to be changed or something along those lines I can just rerecord it and just dump it in there and no one will ever know As long as you're using the same microphone And you know listening to what was what was my voice sounding like at that particular time of the day So, uh, I two to one. Yeah Two to one is if you're really good at it three I'd prepare to be three to one if you're just starting out Maybe even four to one because you have to learn how to edit, but that's why we're here We're teaching you these tricks that allow you to learn these things and get it done right I think another important distinction was he doesn't do acx books folks So those those time ratios he's talking about are just to be the actor Um, the folks that are doing acx books and painfully Producing them a hundred percent themselves are spending way more than two to one They're spending five seven eight hours per finished hour I hear this often people tell me this all the time and That ain't no way to make a living folks that that's just it's it's brutal Um, the mastering because johnny was never taught how to do it quickly and easily to him is an absolute mystery To me, it's absolutely, uh, elementary my idea because I've taught how to do it on so many platforms There's tools that automate it almost completely It is not nearly as hard as it sounds anymore with the right setup in the training. So But yeah, proofing there's no way to shortcut that it takes a while to proof an audiobook Now you might be able to proof it a little faster than real time I've heard of people listening one and a half to one even possibly two to one Real time so they're listening at double speed, but yeah, it's it's hard It there's not a lot of shortcuts there. You really have to listen to it to catch those Um mistakes, you know, so and and the better the narrator you are the better you are at cold reading Or reading it for the second time if you free read the book or a third depending on how How really how much research you do exactly then you you might be able to move faster So it all comes down to experience. Yeah, and and of course when it comes to editing Yeah, I mean if you're editing your own stuff, it doesn't make economic sense, especially if you're doing stuff on acx to do it yourself Uh, or I mean you have to do it yourself if you have somebody else to it. It's cutting into your profit, which is like, you know Pretty thin margin So it's good to get good at it And then if you get really good at it, then you can start editing for other people and make up for the time The money you're not making from not doing enough audiobook work But there's always a need for editors out there But the top people don't do their own their own editing they they send it off to somebody else There's programs that will do proofing there. There's all sorts of stuff that goes with audiobooks and uh, it's its own industry folks That's why it has its own conferences its own facebook groups its own Everything and you know when I came into this business from the voiceover end of things and audiobook people because of acx We're starting to appear uh in my inbox. I had to start really looking into it. What is this process? Oh my gosh, you have to do all this. Oh man, this is time consuming um and finding ways to shortcut and and really It make the process more efficient for the narrative for the narrator was was the name of the game Alrighty, uh One more question here from grace newton What's the best way to clean a laptop screen? No, that's not it. Yeah, I I use purell I have this stuff that I've just had on my in my drawer for years. It's called eye clear apple polish Oh, this is specific for leap for apples. Okay. Um, it says works on macbooks That's such a what a marketing play. Um, macbook pros. Oh, it works on macbooks and macbook pros Great, even though it's the same screen Sinem, this is how old this is studio and cinema displays. This is this is this has been around for a while um Yeah, something like this and then spray it on to a a glass a glens cleaning cloth This one's pretty dirty. Um, and then that's and that's what I that's what I use For actually have another cleaning tool Um, let's see Do you have that like that brush with the squeegee brush? Where is that? Come on Here it is So I used to just carry around I still carry around this brush I don't even know what this is for. Maybe it's a dusting brush Or maybe it's like a just sort of a chunky kids paintbrush I don't know. This is great for cleaning the milks and crannies and the keyboard But then I found these things and maybe I need to get some more for holiday gifts this year it's it's It's a it's a screen wipe wiping off smudges It's a dusting brush for cleaning out little dusty things and it's a little rubber silicone Spudgery thing for cleaning out into in little cracks and seams and crevices and your keyboard and stuff This thing's kind of cool. Of course. I don't know what it's called or who made it because oh here we go It's it's made by full circle Full circle not the partial circle the full circle, right? There you go There's a tool you can use to uh to clean out the milks and crannies Yeah, all right. We've got one more question here from ap white watts. He says are you able to use the speech recognition feature on twisted wave? similar to positron Yeah, I haven't spent much time in positron Um, so I know what it's I know what it's conceptually for I know it's for Helping automate proofing and find, you know, let you know that you miss spoke a word Um, yeah the twisted wave speech recognition is a similar idea So when you when you're working on a project you load your script into twisted waves script importing tool And now while you're recording It's recognizing each word that you speak Highlighting it and if you miss a word miss miss the word completely Or say the wrong word it will highlight it in yellow in your script Letting you know where you made a flub so you can go much more easily back And navigate and it follows where wherever you are in the waveform So if you if you highlight a word in the script It goes right to that word in the waveform and vice versa So the script and the waveform are always attached to each other in time. It definitely Dan if that was around when you were doing this full time, I'm sure you would have used it Like it probably would have saved you a lot of time It it may have but then again, I just I didn't like doing audio books. Yeah, that's the bottom line I mean, it's just a lot of time. I mean heck and I did the entire bible. So, uh, yeah Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, you can you can download the demo for for 30 days for free Um and play around with it And if you find you like it, it's only 50 bucks and just like everything twisted wave. It's a one time Buy so it's a pretty good value. Yeah, all right Some very practical stuff there that you might not normally hear but you only get it Here on voiceover body shop tech time the condensed version. Yeah Anyway, all right, we'll be right back after these messages and wrap things up. So don't go away Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great In these modern times every business needs a website When you need a website for your voice acting business, there's only one place to go Like the name says voice actor websites dot com Their experience in this niche webmaster market gives them the ability to quickly and easily get you from concept To live online in a much shorter time when you contact voice actor websites dot com Their team of experts and designers really get to know you and what your needs are They work with you to highlight what you do Then they create an easily navigable website for your potential clients to get the big picture of who you are And how your voice is the one for them plus voice actor websites dot com has other great resources Like their practice script library and other resources to help your voiceover career flourish Don't try it yourself. Go with the pros voice actor websites dot com Where your via website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what? Your dynamic voice over career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead There's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer That place is voiceover extra dot com Whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level Stay in touch with market trends coaching products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls voiceover extra has hundreds of articles free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed Learn from the most respected talents coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions bringing you the most current information on topics Like audio books auditioning home studio setup and equipment marketing performance techniques and much more It's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voiceover success sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports It's all here at voiceover extra dot com. That's voiceover x t r a dot com This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez and you're enjoying dan and george on the voiceover body show Hey there. Well, let's see next week is What's next week going to be next week is like the last week before Christmas I don't know if we'll see you all before christmas but happy hanukkah to everybody and merry christmas and We're still deciding whether we want to do a show the day after christmas Because christmas is on a sunday when is uh, hanukkah this year it starts next week sometime. Oh, okay not next week. It starts It starts The 19th monday the 19th. Oh, it's a lot close. It actually overlaps Christmas. Yes, you know everybody says. Oh, it's late this year. And then if you know the jewish calendar It's like no, it's when it's always is that's it's never late. It's a 25th kiss left. That's when it always is Anyway, uh Next week on the show who knows who we're gonna have but somebody will be there Although I did run into morris lemarsh at the vet the other day and he said he wanted to be on the show That'll be fun. Oh my god. He has a very large dog Anyway, uh, who are our donors of the week? We have robert ledham Stephen chandler kasey clack jonathan grant tom pinto Shelly avaleno greg tomas a doctor voice antland productions martha con 949 designs christopher epperson sarah borges philips appear brian page patty gibbons rob rider shana pennington baird don griffith Trey moseley tray been with us for years diana birdsall and sandra manwheeler Yeah, well, I have to get ready for my shift at trader joes. So we're gonna get That is the quintessential It's an old it's an old joke, but it's also an old shirt. So uh Okay, remember if you need help with your home voiceover studio You can go over to home voiceovers studio.com And I can help you out and we'll talk about the voiceover business and how to make sure your audio is sounding right Or you can talk to mr. Tech george the tech At george the tech, right? That's right. That's right There's a webinar that you have missed by now But don't worry because every webinar that we do on uh live live or dead Every single one of them is archived in our in our online store on vimeo that you can rent and watch for a year So don't worry if you've missed it. We just don't we just did went on adobe audition um Actually, yeah, that's right. It was on adobe audition. Um Gift ideas, uh, by the way, um because it's still the holidays My dear dad he loves making stuff And let me show you a couple of kinds of things that my dad makes now this this one is not okay This one unfortunately the the wiring. No, that's not the right one here I've got all these things. They're dioramas My dad makes dioramas and he makes them for whatever you can think of this is a diorama of me At the bicycle shop where I volunteer every wednesday night exactly what it looks like at the microwave There you go. Isn't that cute? Yeah, so that's the kind of thing my dad so he makes dioramas, but he also makes whirligig And here's one right here This one's got some extra wiring and stuff because we're trying to make it electrified. So because I don't have wind In my apartment, um, but anyway, this is a whirligig spin the propeller And the thing moves around this is probably one of the least interesting ones because it's just based on My old recording studio that was based And an rv that looks exactly like this down to the audio snake in the back Right there. There's the snake With the big cable. It's amazing. Anyway, very very personal and customized. I mean, that's what I mean He makes bespoke, uh, you know designs if needed or you can check him out Just email my dad's not on etsy. Okay He's too busy for that. He's just email whirligigs fair weather whirligigs at comcast.net He can send my dad an email He can either make you something's custom or show you send pictures of uh, some of his Inventory because he's got quite a few Alrighty. All right. We need to thank our sponsors like harlin hogan's voiceover essentials Voiceover extra source elements source elements. Yeah, you said that one view heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com and world voices dot org the industry association of Freelance voice talent Uh, thanks to jeff holman for getting the questions in from the chat room sumer lino for just amazing direction tonight and lee penni Just for being Hey, Merry christmas. Happy hanukah. Hey, we'll see you all very shortly Uh, enjoy this show and you can watch any show because they're all on youtube and they're all on facebook and You can go back and start from the beginning and in 11 years you will catch up That's right. Well watch one episode every day. It'll may it'll take you like a half a year. No, it'll take you a year No, it'll take you more than a year. We'll get to work. Yeah start now You're done by 2024. Anyway, that's gonna do it for us tonight. You know, this is not an easy business voiceover But if your sound is is gotta be there But we ask we always say if it sounds good It is good. I'm dan lennard and i'm george wittem and this is voiceover body shop or vo b s tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk Have a great holiday season everybody