50 About Movie Narration

Before You Begin

7 About Making Audio a Priority

46 About Movie Maker Audio

See Also

52 Add Narration to Your Movie

Movie Maker supports narration so that you can add a voice track on top or in place of your video's Audio track. Perhaps you want to produce an instructional video that teaches viewers how to buy and sell items online. You might want to capture the video from a computer screen-based video recording program and then add the narration that guides the viewer through the steps taken later. You might also add narration on top of video that already has a soundtrack recorded with it. For example, if your video contains people talking, you might want to add narration to the beginning that tells who is doing the speaking.

KEY TERM

Narration ” Voicing over a video to provide a description, tell a story, or introduce scenes and events.

The Audio and Audio/Music tracks hold your movie's sounds, soundtrack, and any narration you want to use.

NOTE

You can record narration either outside Movie Maker ( see 51 Create Narration Outside Movie Maker ) or from within Movie Maker. If you record narration within Movie Maker, you can watch the video as you record the narration, and Movie Maker will keep the video and narration properly synchronized when you play back the movie.

Your movie can contain still pictures. For example, you might want to focus on a single shot and explain what is going on through narration. You can take a picture from any video clip ( see 41 Take a Picture from a Clip ), adjust its duration to keep that picture on the screen for a while, and then add narration so that your audience will hear you describe what is happening in the picture.

If your movie is composed entirely of still pictures, your movie will actually be a slideshow. Music and narration will help engage your audience in a way that the old family slideshows before the 1990s never could.