A Guide to Recording Audio Description

Audio description services involve recording and overlaying an audio track to a video, which describes visual elements so that the content can be understood and better appreciated by viewers who are blind or have visual impairment.

There are two important elements involved in creating an audio description track to ensure accessibility on your videos. The first is script writing, which was covered in our recent Guide to Writing Audio Description. The second important step is recording the audio track. A lot of factors need to be considered in order to provide an AD track that is fit-for-purpose, and some of the major factors are covered below.

Voice Style – Recording

An audio track should fit the overall style of a video and selecting the best voice is a crucial step. This often starts firstly, with a choice between a male or female voice. Other important considerations can be the age of the voice artist. For example, a gardening programme may suit an older voice artist, if the target audience is more mature, whereas children’s programming would usually suit a more youthful voice. The tone of the audio description should also be considered by the artist, to match the tone of the video. For instance, a corporate video should have a serious tone, whereas AD for children’s content should joyful and enthusiastic.

Volume – Sound Editing

Once audio description has been recorded and overlaid, it’s absolutely crucial to check through the video to ensure that the volume of the AD track is sufficient to be audible over all of the events of the video. For instance, while the AD volume may be loud enough over quiet musical sections or even silence, it may require serious tweaking to be audible over the sound of a loud explosion or complex, loud musical sections with a lot of bass.

Timing – Post Production

Correct timings in an audio description track ensure that there are no overlaps with dialogue which would make the description difficult to hear and potentially also cause the viewer to miss important dialogue that is part of the source video. Timings for AD need to be precise, timed to the millisecond, to maximise time available. Descriptions should have been tailored at the script writing stage to be concise to fit, but where time is limited, the speed of the audio may need to be tweaked, and/or any pauses between speech removed in order to ensure that everything fits exactly. In some cases, where a description is crucial to a video but there is no space between dialogue already on a video, it’s necessary to move the description slightly out of sync with the video, adding it in late or early to make sure that important information isn’t missed.

Clarity

AD should always be recorded in a sound studio to ensure the highest quality. Once audio description has been recorded, it’s important to check that the sound is clear. This involves listening back and running a quality check. Amendments and tweaks can be made to the sound in terms of reducing any echo/reverb, adjusting tone, removing, altering volumes and running any other sound enhancements as required.

So there you have it, our quick guide to recording audio description. If you would like to know more about this service or any other services we currently offer then visit our website today or click the button below to get your quote today.