Choose who speaks: narrator, characters, or no voices

One choice on the create page, or the lines of your script, decides who speaks in your video. Use this guide when a video has no voices or the wrong speakers.

Choose who speaks for an idea

In Video Story, with From an idea selected, find the Voiceover step. Select one option:

• Auto: the app reads your idea and chooses the speakers. It can also choose that nobody speaks.
• Narrator only: one narrator voice reads the whole story. No character speaks.
• Narrator + characters: a narrator, and each character in its own voice.
• Characters only: the characters speak in their own voices, with no narrator.
• No voices: the video has no speech. The characters do not speak either.

What to select:

• For characters that speak and no narrator, select Characters only, not No voices.
• If the narrator read everything in your last video, select Narrator + characters or Characters only.
• To be sure that the video has speech, select an option that names the speakers, not Auto.

Some universes do not show these options.

Write the speakers in a script

After you add a script, the Voiceover step shows Speakers from your script. Your lines decide who speaks:

• A character line has the handle, a colon, and the words in quotes, all on one line: @Mira: "There it is."
• A narrator line uses @Narrator: @Narrator: "Mira has one minute to find the key."
• Text with no quotes is never spoken.

For no narrator, write no @Narrator lines. For narration only, write only @Narrator lines. If the narrator says a character's words, move them to a line of that character.

The Speakers box in the script window lists the speakers found in your script. The script guide has the full format.

From audio takes one recording for the whole video, not one for each character. See Start from an idea, script, or audio.

Check before you generate

• If the create page says This video will have no voices: the script has no spoken lines., select Open the script and correct the lines.
• The Ready to create? window shows Without Voices when your choice is No voices, or when the universe has voiceover off. Select Cancel and change the Voiceover choice.
• If the step says Voiceover is off in this universe, see Use voices, audio, and captions.

Change the speech after the video is made

To turn all speech on or off:

1. Open the video in the editor.
2. Select Project settings, then Voiceover.
3. Use the Play voiceover switch. It sets every spoken line, the narrator and the characters together.
4. Render the video again.

If a video has spoken lines but no speech, check this switch first. When the script of the video has no spoken lines, the switch is not shown. To get speech, make the video again with a different Voiceover choice.

No switch removes only the narrator. Change the lines on each card instead:

• To remove the narrator, open the card's Voiceover tab and use Delete line on each narrator line.
• To make a character speak, select Add line, choose the speaker, and write the words.

See Change words, captions, and voices after generation. For mouths that do not move, see Lip sync: when mouths move with the words.

Change the speed of a voice

A voice has no speed setting. You can choose a different voice, or add a pause to a line. See Pick character voices and change how a line sounds.