Hindenburg Narrator – fast and easy

Audio book production should be effortless. That’s why Hindenburg Narrator is designed specifically for narrators and voice actors, removing complexity and allowing you to focus on what truly matters: the story.

Do I need to learn a lot?

As a voice actor, you really have to learn very little. Press Right Arrow to start the take, Space to stop it, and hold Left Arrow to listen back. Making adjustments and fixing imperfections is just as easy: select and press Alt+Shift+R to resume recording there, and following audio will be shifted along the time line accordingly. This includes any chapter markers, so that text and audio stay synchronized.

How is text synchronized with sound? – Simply by pressing Right Arrow while the take is running. The focus skips to the next paragraph in the text window and puts a synchronization marker on the timeline simultaneously. Synchronization therefore happens “on the fly”.

Regardless of which type of audio product you create, these very simple basic actions always apply.

Constructive collaboration with the studio

Navigation structure and technical settings – For a navigable audio book, there needs to be a navigation structure. This is really an imitation of the book’s table of contents, made in the Manuscript window. Creating the navigation structure is extremely easy, and you will learn how to do it already in the first chapter of the Hindenburg Narrator handbook. Still easier is having the studio’s sound engineer do it for you. He or she will then send you a fully prepared session file that contains the navigation structure as well as any metadata and technical settings the studio requires to be there. As a voice actor, you just open the session file, and start recording immediately.

Maintain the optimal sound of the voice actors – A specific combination of settings for equalization and compression may make you sound best. You can save these settings in a Voice Profile for reuse in later projects. The sound engineer can do the same for you, and keep a collection of Voice Profiles for all of the studio’s voice actors.

Mark locations for review and improvement – The reviewing process is more efficient thanks to the usage of comment markers. After you finished recording the book, return the completed session to the studio. The sound engineer checks it and marks any flaws with a comment marker. In each marker he adds a text that describes the problem or the action to be taken. At the push of a button, the engineer collects the markers in a small file which he sends to you by e-mail. When you open the file in Hindenburg Narrator, the comment markers spread to their correct locations in the audio. Simply jump to a marker using Tab and Shift+Tab, or start from the list in the “Markers” window. Make the improvements, and resubmit the session to the studio.

Exporting the finalized version can be done either by you or by the studio, depending on established procedures.

Enabling fast production

More great time saving features are described in the Handbook. Here are some of them.

Automatic volume leveling – Loudness should be on the same level throughout the recording. For newly recorded parts, the volume must be adapted to the audio that was already existing on the track. Doing this job by hand requires a lot of listening and comparing for each new take again and consumes an awful lot of time. Hindenburg Narrator will level newly added audio automatically.

Automatic name assignment to export files – A superb time saving feature was  introduced in 2024 for those among us who narrate texts for video games and other products that require a multitude of precisely named export files, such as museum audio tours, IVRs and car navigation. Input is taken from an Excel sheet with three columns for the filename, the clause and any directions, respectively. All we need to do is to speak the clauses and export the entire collection once.

Automatic length adjustment of chapter breaks – The length of breaks can be automatically adjusted to the specified standards set by some audio book publishers like ACX and Findaway Voices.  

Export audio books in batch – Depending on the book’s size, exporting can take up to several hours. You cannot use Hindenburg Narrator during export. Very efficient is the option to place several audio products in a batch (queue) and to run them outside working hours. The next morning you will find the results of the export and you can continue working.

Create additional WAVE copies – You can tell Hindenburg Narrator to export to both MP3 and WAVE. The program then creates two versions, so you don’t have to wait for the first one to complete before you can start the second.