iMovie Tutorial: How To Record a Voiceover (With & Without a Mic!)

– In this video, I'm gonna show you how to do a voiceover, directly inside of iMovie.

– [Man] You gotta just press record.

– Hey my name is Nolan Moltand this is Think Media.

So today, we're gonna be using the Blue Yeti Microphone fordoing our voiceover in iMovie, but you can use any microphone.

I'll explain how you can do a voiceover with something like a smartphone, and then I'm gonna show you how to record with something like a USBmic directly into I-Movie.

Now, to be fair, we're notusing this microphone just yet, but I am gonna be using this in the video.

First things first, we wanna figure out exactly where I wantto start the voiceover.

And you wanna just move your playhead to where you want it to start.

So, for me, I wanted to starton this clip right here, where my wife walks out into the ocean, and I'm gonna do a littlevoiceover right here.

So right at the beginning, I'm gonna hit my playhead.

Now, in order to get tothe voiceover options, all you gotta do is hit this little microphone button right here, and you're gonna see a big red button, which is how you start recording, and this right here is your audio levels.

This tells you how loud or quiet it is.

If it is way down here at the bottom, it's going to be really quiet.

It can get orange orred, and that tells you that it's a bit too loud.

Right here on the rightis our voiceover options, and if you open this up, you're going to see a few more things.

So, input source, right now it's set to the built-in microphone on my iMac, and I definitely don't want to use that, because I'm going to getsome pretty bad audio, and so if you don't have a USB microphone, I recommend not using the iMac, you know, the new MacBook Pros thatApple has been releasing actually have some really really good microphones inside of them, but for a lot of us, our computers, our laptops, just don't have good audio.

For most of us, whatever we're using, the built-in microphone isnot going to be very good.

So a great option is topull out a smartphone, for me, my iPhone, gointo the Voice Memos app, and then you can record with the iPhone, or whatever smartphone you have, pretty close to your mouth, not right in front of yourmouth, maybe off to the side, and if you do your voiceover like this you're going to get way better audio than the built-inmicrophone on your computer.

From there, you would justAirDrop it to your computer, and drag it from thedownloads onto your project.

One other tip with recordingwith a smartphone is that if you plug in headphonesinto your smartphone, and it has a speaker on the cord, you can actually sometimesuse that microphone.

So if you hold that rightin front of your mouth, and you begin to talk into it, and do your voiceover, sometimes you can get much better audio with that as well.

But for us, since wehave this USB microphone, we want to select the USBAdvanced Audio Device.

Now, whatever yours is titled, it's going to pop up there if it is connected to the computer, and you're going to select that.

Now, here you can see youcan change the volume, and then you can also mute the project.

So if you don't want to hear, maybe, the music that's overlaid, or if you don't want to hear the sound that's coming from the video where you're doing your voiceover, you can keep that selected.

I like to keep mute project checked.

One last thing to do that is super crucial before recording yourvoiceover is actually going into your system preferences on your laptop or computer.

So for me, I'm going to select Apple.

I'm going to go to System Preferences, and then I'm going to go to Sound.

Now, something to notice hereis we want to go to Input because that is whatthe voiceover is using is the input of the microphone, and here we have our USB micselected, so that is good.

Here is where we needto make some big changes that's going to make a hugedifference for our voiceover.

Our input volume right now bydefault is just set to 50%.

So if I unmute my microphone on here, and I talk you're goingto notice two things: one, this input level is crazy loud, and literally it's red.

Any time I start talking–ifI stop talking it'll go away, but this thing is just way to loud.

So on the back of mymicrophone I have a gain level, and I can turn it all the waydown, but even if I do that, the computer is just boosting it so loud that it's not even helping.

On this computer if you leave the input volume up pretty high you're going to getsome weird buzzing sound out of this thing, and some hissing, and just stuff that we do not want on our voiceover.

So I like to turn mineall the way down to zero, and then just barelypop it up right there.

So that is the least it can go, and that's where I want to leave it.

So from there I want to boostthe audio on my microphone, which is going to give methe best quality sound.

All right, now that I've got my audio level right about here, I don't want it at the very top, because then I could start clipping, I just want them a few notches down.

So this is actually looking perfect.

Now that that is set to go, we're going to get really good audio, and I'm going to show youexactly how to do that.

So, back here, make sureyou have this selected, and then you can see here that my audio levels look pretty good, and that–there it goes, orange, which is okay.

You just don't want it to go red.

If I talk really close to the microphone, then it's going to go red, but, again, I'm going to be right here.

Orange is fine, green is fine.

So, let's open up the settings, make sure we're all set, make sure we're all good to go.

Now, one of the weird things in iMovie is that there is anotherinput volume level.

If I adjust this you're going to notice that iMovie is now boosting it.

So we want to keep this down.

We're going to actuallyjust keep that at zero, and see how it sounds.

Now before I hit the redbutton to start recording, it's going to give you three seconds to kind of prepareyourself for the recording, and so it is going tojump back three seconds.

Don't freakout when it starts recording it will start right here at the playhead where you wanted to.

So, let's hit that.

(beeping countdown) Thanks for watching this video.

If you use iMovie, givethis video a thumbs up.

Then you're going to hitthe same button to stop it, and now we have a voiceover.

So let's take a listenand see how it sounds.

– [Nolan] Thanks for watching this video.

If you use iMovie, givethis video a thumbs up.

– So it sound pretty good.

Once you've recorded your voiceover, you can still move itaround if you wanted to start it at the beginning of your video, and you can drag these ends here, if you want to cut off any parts of it.

So, for example, if I want tocut off the beginning part.

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– [Nolan] Thanks for watching this video.

– I want to cut all that out, and I just drag and trim it off, and then these right here are going to fade in and out your audio.

So I'm just going to fadethat in just a little bit.

I don't want it going over my voice, but I want to fade it inand out just a little bit.

So right here.

– [Nolan] If you use iMovie, give this video a thumbs up.

– Awesome, so that sounds great, and that's how you do avoiceover inside of iMovie.

If you learned something, give this video a like, and subscribe to Think Media, and if you want to check out our playlist with Editing in iMovie, then you can click on the screen right now, and until next time, I'll see you guys later.

(bassy music).