Format

What is Voiceover?

Also called VO.

In one sentence

A voiceover is narration recorded separately from the footage and laid over it. In short-form it is the backbone of faceless content, where the script does all the work a presenter would otherwise do.

Explanation

The thing that separates short-form voiceover from every other kind is pace. Broadcast and audiobook narration is written and read at a speed that feels unbearably slow in a feed, and the single most common problem with generated voiceover is not that it sounds artificial but that it starts half a second late and never catches up.

The second difference is that the script has to be written for the ear. Subordinate clauses, parentheses and long noun phrases all survive on a page and all collapse when someone has to say them aloud at speaking pace.

The common mistake

Writing the script as text and then reading it. Anything whose meaning depends on punctuation a listener cannot see has to be restructured, because comprehension of spoken sentences falls off sharply past about fifteen words.

Where this shows up in PikoReels

In PikoReelsVoiceover script generatorScripts written for speech rather than for reading.

Related

Back to the glossary.

Reading about it is the slow way

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