Hi all,
   This is the video I produced for use by a company in the database field. Instead of making it about the technology, it really focuses on how using the technology improves the life of the IT staff and the company itself.




- Jeff
The Adventures of Capt Sanchez
Cybernautic Studios

Jeff - I'm not in that field, but I give your video a big thumbs up.  It presents great selling points.

I particularly like your having Solitaire on the screen, and putting practice.

Did you use software voices like Replica Studios?  I wasn't 100 percent happy with the voice quality.  It sounded a bit too mechanical, flat, unemotional.  I use Replica often and am mostly happy with it, but sometimes, when I'm doing something important, I go to Fiveerr.  I have found a few really good voice actors out there at reasonable rates.  There are many who are awful; you'll need to audition a few.  But it's worth it to get some true human emotion into it.

Have you considered a musical background?  It would have to be soft during speaking and then swell at the several payoff points.  I've learned that having effective music in the background can bring a video to life.  The easy way is to join a place like Digital Juice, who offers a gigantic range of music in anywhere from 10-second to longer clips that convey an enormous range of emotions.  If you have some musical talent, you can create your own custom music with CakeWalk, which I love and use often.

But the bottom line is that it is very good and should make your client happy.

Tim

Hi Timothy,
   Thanks for the great feedback. I put alot of effort into that video. I'm a bit emabarrassed to say that the voices are real humans (I played Bob and my friend James played "worried Walter"). Neither one of us is a voice actor, but it was all I had at the time. I agree with you 100% though, there is no substitute for a real human voice with all the subtleties of inflection.
   I did think about adding music, but I wasn't sure I could fit it in. Music is great for setting the mood of a scene. However, I had so much exposition going on I thought it might detract from the dialog. There are subtle background noises (like the office noises in the first scene) but they may be too subtle to register.
   Everytime I create a video I learn so much. I've gotten so great ideas and constructive criticism from the good folks here! Thank you.

- Jeff
The Adventures of Capt Sanchez
Cybernautic Studios

There is Voicemaker, an online Ai text to speech. It is $5 a month for 250,000 characters a month. You can save to various audio formats.
Some voices have over 10 voice effect types (happy, sad, hopeful and many more). You can change voice speed too.
Here is a link for you to check out. 
You can login with Google and pay with Paypal. It is a month to month non renewable subscription plan. Also an annual plan.
I have done a couple of months of the $5 plan. I only used 12,000 characters in one month, and the other month I went crazy and used 
13,000 characters out of 250,000. 
Link to a couple of videos using Voicemaker Ai.

Plans & Pricing - VoiceMaker

Interesting... I've never heard of VoiceMaster.  Thanks for that.  I haven't listened to the demo links you sent yet, but I will real soon.  The household is still sleeping and I don't want to wake them up.

Have you tried Replica?  I'm mostly happy so far.  They are far from perfect, but they have some truly excellent character actors.  Here's a few voices that I particularly like.  The Valley Girl teenager in the library video is particularly great.




Tim

Yes, I've used Replica. Their voices have more accents, like Cockney and Southern drawl. 
I like Voicemaker, they have whispers and shouting. You can adjust the pitch of a voice that
sounds better than an online voice changer. 
It is fast to use. You type or cut and paste in the box. Then you can convert to mp3 real fast.
Then you can copy and paste into the AccuLips box. It makes it simple.
I looked at your videos, and they are quite good. I only have a 4GB video card, so I can't get
to many objects in a scene.

>> I only have a 4GB video card, so I can't get to many objects in a scene.<<
I don't know if this trick will help you, but it helps a LOT for display speed, so I suspect it might help at least some for memory.  (At least for IC 7; I have not explored this on IC 8 yet.)

After you have finished placing a set of objects in a scene and know that you will not have to move them again, make them into a parent/child hierarchy and then merge all of the children into the parent.  Thus you end up with one large, complex object instead of many small, simple objects.  For some reason this makes their processing tremendously faster.  On my prior computer with a GTX 1080 Ti this one trick often made the difference between being able to do a scene and not being able to.

Tim

I was impressed enough with the sample voices of your cute videos that I just signed up for VoiceMaker.  I think that Replica does a better job with extreme character acting, but VoiceMaker has a wider selection of voices.  Thanks for pointing me there!
Tim