Prepare your video for dubbing: seven habits

A dub is only as good as its script, and the script is only as good as the audio it comes from. Seven habits make the difference.

1. Clean audio

Record close to the microphone, in a quiet room. Noise, echo and music under speech make the transcript worse, and every mistake in the transcript is translated and voiced.

2. One speaker at a time

Dublio gives the whole video one voice. A talk or a lecture by one person fits. If two people speak, let them take turns, and expect one narrator in the dub. Overlapping speech is hard to write down and hard to time.

3. A steady pace

Translated text is often longer than the original, so the dub needs room. Pauses between sentences give the voice space. Very fast speech leaves none, and the dub will be shortened or sped up in places.

4. Know what stays in the original language

Text drawn into the picture, such as titles, slides and captions, is part of the video. Dublio does not translate it. If it matters, cover it in the voice, add subtitles, or redo the slide. The voice can mention what a slide says if you say it aloud.

5. Music and sound

You can keep the original sound quietly under the dub or remove it. Removing it also removes its music and sound effects. If your video has music you want to keep, keep the original sound. Otherwise remove it and add one of the music tracks that come with Dublio, or your own.

6. Names and terms

Make a short list of names, products and terms before you start. Put them in the instructions, so the first translation already has them right. See How to write instructions for the translator.

7. A good file, and a test part

Export your video at its normal quality as MP4, MOV, MKV or WebM. Dub one minute first, with a start and an end time, to check voice and tone. Then do the rest. If your video is longer than 20 minutes you need a pack, and the longest video is 60 minutes. For longer ones, dub it in parts.

What you can still fix afterwards

Almost anything in the script. A bad transcript is the one thing that is more work to fix, because the translation follows it, so the habits above are worth it.