VoiceTrack 101 - Optimization
We care about your experience with PromptSmart. Your satisfaction is very important to us, and so we encourage you to review these guidelines carefully and/or bookmark this page for future reference.
VoiceTrack is one of a kind -- it’s flexible and it’s accurate -- but it’s complicated technology and much can go wrong. We’ve learned a thing or two over the years and have crystallized some best practices to pass on to our users:
(1) Maximize Audio Signal Clarity
Onboard mic - Distances of more than ~5 feet compromise audio quality; the onboard mic is designed for hand-held use.
Wired mics – Our happiest customers use the correct gear. Be careful to select a mic that is designed for mobile devices – many of them are not.
Wireless mics – Avoid them if you can because they introduce latency/lag and may require an adapter cable to talk to your device.
Camera Output -- When using a teleprompter rig, it is very helpful to pipe in the audio-out from the camera to the prompter using an adapter cable.
(2) Be aware of Your Speaking Environment
Turn off any music
Restrict ambient noise if possible; when unavoidable, use a cardioid/unidirectional mic so that the speaker is picked up and ambient noise is attenuated
Echoes/reverberation causes interference and can significantly reduce scrolling accuracy because VoiceTrack will think there are two speakers.
(3) Speaker-Specific Tips
If it seems like VoiceTrack isn’t following you closely enough, enunciate clearly. This works better than speaking louder.
Shorten the duration of your pauses to less than 1s if you’re reading from a list of single words or short phrases; otherwise the app may not connect what you’re saying around the pauses.
(4) Mobile Device & App-Specific Tips
Set the app to the lowest font size for comfortable reading. More words on the display = less chance for error.
Avoid toggling both Audio Recording and Video Recording simultaneously.
Force quit apps running in the background. These background apps drain resources and may handicap VoiceTrack.
Delete old scripts you’re no longer using.
Grant PromptSmart permission to access the microphone and/or remove any privacy restrictions in Settings preventing microphone access.
(iOS only) - If you use copy/paste to create new PromptSmart scripts, please be advised that the default “copy” action includes formatting. For text-only copying, follow these steps: Tap-and-hold > Select text > Share > Copy (from the “share” context menu)
(5) Refine Your Scripts
Keep your scripts plain text by scrubbing them of formatting. Formatting creeps in unexpectedly. Use plain-text copy-and paste. In iOS the default copy contains formatting. Click here to watch a short demo on how to plain text copy in iOS.
Consider using Google Documents (docs.google.com) to use the handy Clear Formatting feature. Watch this demo to see how easy it is. Then import the GDOC directly into PromptSmart.
Remove ellipses...from your scripts or add spaces . . . like so.
Spell out each and every word in your script as you would speak them. Correct: “One million dollars”. Problematic: “$1,000,000.00″. This creates a “dead zone” in your script.
Check carefully for typos – misspelled words will cause VoiceTrack to expect something other than what is said.
Remove emojis/emoticons and also remove hidden characters, such as hard spaces. Emojis in the text can cause stability problems. Clearing formatting in GDOC (above) will take care of any hard spaces.
Prevent skipping forward -- substitute acronyms or short-hand (“FBI” vs. “Federal Bureau of Investigation”) for wordy or repetitive phrases that may appear frequently in your content. If the same string of text is repeated on the display, it might cause the app to jump ahead of you.
Avoid using Pages to create script content. The file format can cause problems when importing the text from the Pages file into the PromptSmart app.
For best performance, we recommend single spaced paragraphs separated by one blank line.
If you’re using Microsoft Word to process scripts, we have some recommendations. First, remove all header/footer content before importing. Set Spacing to “Single” with “0 pt” before and after all the lines (Paragraph > Click box/arrow in corner > [Menu - Spacing]). We recommend then establishing this as your default (”Set as Default”). Remove “Bullets” and replace with “Numbering” or a manually-typed numbered list.
