Tarampa Studios (2/21/2019)

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I think it also depends how professional you aim to be, and if you wish to establish good habits from the start...

eg I admire directors who choreograph their scenes to music, so explosions and other sound effects fit more naturally and enhance the viewing experience..

So I start with a rough blocking of character actions to music, and with dialogue in the subtitles (because for the projects I sell it is a legal requirement to have internationally compliant sub-titles, and so I can see when dialogue or voice tracks need to be trimmed... youtube is also being pressured for all uploads to become compliant for the deaf community and I personally prefer to ensure the quality of my subtitles does not compromise the visual and sound experience... youtube auto subtitling is atrocious and most of the cheapest subtitling services are also terribly inaccurate, even when done for major studios!!!).... then I can also tweak the dialog so it fits the timing of the action and sound track... 

Note: using text to speech for the first draft means I can also record draft expressions but I always mute the computer voice, leaving expressions and subtitles...

Then I send a silent render of the scene with draft expressions and subtitles to the actors so they can see the emotional requirements and timing better so they can record their voices more effectively... but I make sure they know that lip syncs are only very rough and will be perfected later to suit their specific nuances... or perhaps facially mo-capped but thats another story, because I prefer another method over mo cap.... 

Knowing the wordcount for your voice tracks also helps me budget payments for voice tracks more accurately in accordance with standard industry rates for non-union actors... and as an indie I try to work with actors directly so I dont have the additional expenses of their agents... and also so I can quote and get agreement on cost of their voices, laughs and other utterances written into their talent release form BEFORE they record so there's no messy negotiations or arguments later. 

If you dont get those agreements locked down you can be disqualified from film festivals and makes it much harder to sell your work through many commercial distributors later... 
without the agreements locked down, you cant get paid as big an advance coz the distributor can charge legal expenses for locking down agreements ... and if voice actors argue with them you may be forced to do allthe extra work to replace them with a more compliant... or more famous... actor... but thats another story too...

Actors are also more likely to sign their agreements and return them up front (when they send in their sound tracks) than trying to chase them later. 

So it is my company policy to use local talent as much as possible, so I can also meet them at a local radio station or uni sound studio to record their voices professionally myself. I have credit acknowledement greements with both locations so the use of their pro sound recording facilities doesnt cost me anything. Maybe you have that option in your local area too?

Otherwise if the voice talent live too far away (my last series included voices of real scientists on location everywhere from antarctica to the flanks of live tropical volcanoes - which also means they could send me one minute of ambience recorded on location at no extra cost)....

Then upon recieving 3 takes of their voices, I cut-n-paste the best of each take in my editor... taking care to tweak the micro seconds between each word and clean up the audio...

Then render the audio-only voice tracks separately for each actor, load them into iClone characters and perfect each lip sync which usually also means repairing expressions...

Then I recompile it all in my editor, delete the iclone rendered sound track and restore all the separate tracks for voices, music, ambience and sfx so they can be polished better during final pass of sound engineering in a way that is also compliant with the needs of your distributor for cinema/tv/web distribution etc.

Im still on that steep learning curve myself, so for the highest paid jobs I send the final project to a pro sound engineer or lend it to my local uni for teachers to coach students on final stages of sound engineering.

At that stage even a famous sound pro can be quite cheap - eg final sound engineering for each 10 minutes of film, where you have taken care of most tracks yourself only costs about a tank full of diesel for a 4wd... in my experience at least. 

Perhaps if you want a checklist for final sound engineering it would be great to hear everyone's suggestions. eg I would start the checklist with:

*removing any hiss etc from sound that had to be recorded on location.
* avoiding or repairing echoes
* sound mastering to 0dB 
* trimming/cleaning the micro silences between each word
polishing music - especially at each scene transition...

but there are quite a few more that I am only just starting to learn myself.

Either way, good luck!! 

... Thanks Tarampa there is a lot in this i hadn't consisdered at all. I was thinking of using Fiver voice-over artists for my present project, a lot of the demos they give as examples have the voices sounding how i need them so it seems ideal and also affordable. I'll need to check out the legal stuff too so that that isn't a future headache. I'm curious what you use iclone for in a professional capacity if you dont mind me asking.