Are you using the "Capture" room of PD or do you use WaveEditor?
When I record my VO, I use WE, as it offers the possibility of cutting and (limited) editing the WAV before importing it to PD.

Michael.

Hi, Alik

I recently finished a vacation video also, and used the VO recording room for the first time. I agree it's extremely slow, so I kept my VO in bits as short as possible, probably averaging 30 seconds or less. Those took about a minute for PD9 to process on my system.

Notice also that if you need to do a re-take, and you use CTRL+Z to step back, the clip is removed from the track, but it's still in the media folder. You can get quite a pile up of bad takes, and you need to right click each of those duds in your media folder and ask for them to be deleted from disc.

You can't rely on the mixing room's meter, it's not in sync with the signal as you record. For my mike, I needed the slider no more than 1/2 way up.

Mike, if you use the Wave Editor instead of the mixing room,--how are you seeing the video you're narrating--?

rbowser

1. I write down my text
2. I test the text - without microphone - while watching the video
3. I speak the text into WE - each phrase separated by some seconds of quiet.
4. I edit (cut) my WAV file to eliminate unwanted side-sounds (e.g. the ding-dong of our living-room clock or else) and to cut out my stutterings and corrections.
5. I import the edited "clean" WAV file into PD
6. I split the WAV file into portions as needed by the storyboard. Placing time-critical comments is a mere try-and-error to position the speech onto the correct frame position.
When my comments exceed (roughly) 2 minutes, I record more than one WAV file, all saveable in WVE project files of WE, and I import the respective number of WAV files.
My storyboard then looks as in the screenshot.

Michael.

Neat - Thanks for that description of your work flow on that, Mike.

rbowser

Michael and Rbowser
I'll try your Wave Editor method.
hope it works.
Will let you know
thanks
Alik

Quote: Michael and Rbowser
I'll try your Wave Editor method.
hope it works.
Will let you know
thanks
Alik

Hi, Alik - The VO recording room in PD works, you just need to keep your clips down in size. The biggest advantage, of course, is you can see the video as you record. For what I did in the vacation video I mentioned, I wanted the VO to be spontaneous and ad-lib, like the off-the-cuff commentary tracks on DVDs. If you want it fresh and not scripted, then you'll need to work in PD with short 10-30 second clips.

rbowser

Hi all,

I have seen this issue of extended processing times for VO recordings, come up here before in the forum. I don’t have an answer as to why this happens for some users, and can only share the results of a test I just completed.

PD9.0.0.2930
XP Pro / 32bit
Drive: C: - Free Space 407.4 GB
Realtek HD Audio - Driver Date: 5/2/2007 – Size: 4403712 bytes

Placed 8 minutes and 45 seconds of H.264 AVCHD footage (1920x1080 with a bit rate of 44.18Mbps, at a frame rate of 29.79) in track #1.
Added a fade transition approximately every 15 to 20 seconds.
Then opened the PD9 VO recording room, and recorded 3 minutes of test VO in one take, at the highest stereo audio setting available.

Upon clicking on the Stop recording button, and checking against a stopwatch, the VO processing time was 14 seconds for the 3 minute VO.
I then recorded 3 more minutes of test VO. Processing time was 12 seconds.

I know that doesn't help anyone who is having VO processing time issues. Just adding my results here to the record.
(I will test again on my i7 rig, later this evening)

Click here PDtoots for a collection of PowerDirector Tutorials and Tips

Thanks again.
On Monday I am going to buy a semi-professional condenser mic and will try your suggestions,
and report back.
Can you suggest a good cupturing audio program whre I can record the narration unto a audio disk and then edit the narration (52mts) on a sound track?
Thanks
Alik

Why not use Wave Editor? - It comes with PD, and if you divide your 52min speech into a handful of parts (I assume, you'll catch breath some now and then ?), I'd see no reason for using something else.
Yes, there's "Audacity", a freeware program, which does the same like WE.

Michael.

Thanks mike
I'll try recording unto the WE and report back
Alik

I struggled with this a lot recently. I've determined that when I use like 200 still photos, and their transitions and some video clips, it takes about 2 1/2 minutes for the VO to appear after I hit stop on recording. I was furious because I had left VideoStudio for other issues and found PD to be wonderful...until I tried to finish up with adding the usual 100 or so short voiceovers.

I've gone round and round with tech support who can't seem to duplicate this problem, yet users are complaining. Meanwhile, I found a workaround that worked for a while (I won't elaborate here to save space). That failed eventually, but now I know a sure cure. I take the finished project without VO and create an mpeg-2 video file, import it into a new project, and start adding the voice over. At first the VO appears almost instantly. But half ways through, it starts to take up to 10 seconds. That is sooooo much better than before. I've concluded that PD has so much work to do - for what? - before it places the VO on the track. Apparently that work includes touching each photo, transition, and video clip because the more they are in the project, the longer it takes for the VO to appear. I find that PD's editing is so flexible, that I can adjust most everything even after importing the mpeg-2 file because of the split feature, etc. And, when I create the DVD, it completes so much faster as apparently much of the work was done during the mpeg-2 phase of my workflow.

I put up with this because after using about 10 such types of software over the last decade, PowerDirector is doing the best job of all. I just wish I could figure out why PD crashes or freezes on me all the time - I've learned to save after every change to the project. Bill Seifert
HP Pavilion Desktop TP01-2022
8 core
AMD Radeon
Windows 11, 16 GB RAM

Dear Watercolorwilly,
Last night I tried my new condenser mic (Alctron UM900) and recorded few sections on Wave Editor.
Once I figured out the WE program (couldn't find a detailed manual, why?) I recorded few minutes, edited out some noisy elements, then saved it. Then, I imported the saved section to PD and placed it on a free sound track on the time line. With the split button I spaced the sections to match the pictures. The whole operation was efficient, short and good quality. I am sorry Cyberlink had overlooked the problem of adding a VO for the videos where every other function works relatively well. May be next version
Thanks all for your help
Alik

I'm aware of WE, but from the creative side of things, it does not allow me to casually comment as the scene goes by. My trademark of my travelogs, if anything, is to present a commentary as if I'm there showing you my event and ad-libbing my remarks. WE requires rehearsing a script and is so hard to time with the scene, when the scene isn't even there.

All the other programs I have used had no issue with this. The voice-over appeared immediately and was easily edited, if needed, right there. With all this computer power and sophisticated software, why should we be forced to use a backward WE process? Bill Seifert
HP Pavilion Desktop TP01-2022
8 core
AMD Radeon
Windows 11, 16 GB RAM