Voice-over and Dubbing Technology
The world still longs for the warmth of human voice, right?
This is an indisputable fact: the voiceover and dubbing industry has not died despite the growth in AI technology in the text-to-speech field. Quite the opposite, it looks like the more these technologies grow, the more people demand human voice on their videos and advertisement. What’s more, the voiceover industry has found a new footing in other areas of the industry previously devoted only to computer-generated voice.
As mentioned in the previous article, AI-generated voiceover is trying to take over human voice. The voice technology has advanced so much that sometimes it is impossible to distinguish between humans and machines. However, a complete takeover will not be possible as long as the demand exists for the warmth and emotion of human voice. There are some areas of business where people deliberately choose to hear a human voice for comfort. Therefore, despite the uncanny similarity of AI to human voice, technology has not managed to conquer the voice market completely. Here are some areas of business still solely devoted to human voice:
Voice-over and dubbing market sections
Animation
Animated movies have been steadily growing in popularity. With this popularity has come new technologies and vast amounts of money. In recent years, live-action technology has also been added to this industry.
About 58% of the voiceover market size is devoted to animation. Part of this number is because of using the most famous names in the entertainment industry as the characters of animated movies. And let’s not forget that video games also fit into the category of animation. With the new technologies governing video games and gaming consoles, the amount of money and human resources into game voiceovers is also increasing.
Advertisement
Once upon a time, video advertisements were limited to television and maybe the radio too. Today, however, video advertisements are seen almost anywhere: from the websites you visit, your favorite social media, or even your cell phone and city billboards.
Video advertisement voiceover is one of the fields that require human voice more than anything. Computer-generated voice technology has not yet advanced to be able to replace the human voice. China, Japan, Germany, and the UK are currently the most prominent names in the video advertisement industry.
Education
Education is one of the businesses that has recently started to require voiceover and dubbing. Until the world was ravaged by the Covid pandemic, only a tiny portion of the education industry was devoted to online video teaching. These days, however, education was one of the industries that had to change itself heavily to adapt to the new world.
Today, online teaching and educational videos are an integral part of the new world. Teaching websites cover all kinds of subjects, from school grade math and biology to advanced computer programming and anything else you might dream of learning.
Businesses
Everything and anything else that requires a voiceover fall into this category. Firstly, there are audiobooks. These simply won’t do with a computer-generated voice. A human should read the book to convey the emotions ruling each chapter. Secondly, some podcasts need a human’s sense of situation and humor to attract the audience.
Companies that offer voiceover and dubbing services
Bunny Studio
Bunny Studio is an online platform for customers to order their desired project in audio and video forms. Bunny Studio’s services include video ads, voiceover, writing and translation, and design graphics and photography.
This Studio has 78 team members from 20 different countries and 18 nationalities. The process of working with Bunny Studio involves listening to voiceover samples and choosing the one that suits your project the best. Then you’d send the details of your project and receive the completed project.
Bunny Studio works mainly with freelances with different accents and dialects. What’s more, Bunny Studio works in an affiliate program. This is primarily because the policy in this company is that the best advertisement is through word of mouth.
Capital Captions
Capital Captions is one of the leading companies in the UK's close captioning, video translation, and voiceover services. This company works with more than 50 companies. Capital Captions is basically a family-run business. Brother and sister Anthony and Joden Antoniou work together and use their various specialties in subtitle making and IT. This company too works with freelance translators, typists, and voice actors.
Voices
Voices is a company in which you can hire a voice actor. This company has over 2 million users and claims to be number one in the creative service business. Voices is headquartered in the UK and Canada and has voice actors from 160 countries. These voice actors speak in more than 100 languages and dialects. Therefore, it is safe to say that Voices has a talent for all kinds of needs.
Another interesting fact about Voices is its patented technologies that help the business run as smoothly as possible. These technologies are JobMatch™ which is a recommendation service, SurePay™, a system for holding the customers’ money until a satisfactory job is delivered. Other technologies by Voices are VoiceSearch™ and VoiceRank™.
Encore Voices
Encore Voices is one of the largest voiceover companies in French and English. This company also offers services in Canadian, French, and some other European languages. What’s more, this company has employed over 600 American voice actors and about 200 actors from Canada.
Encore Voices' other services include translation of film or document, lip-sync, narration, post-production, editing, mixing, and delivery.
JBI Studios
JBI was founded in 1977 by an advertising executive called Jaques Boulanger. This company focuses on translation and consulting for marketing content. In 2001, this company built its second studio to offer voiceover and dubbing services in all the languages in the world. These studios have had huge names such as ABC, Hulu, and EA as their clients. JBI was founded in Los Angles, the US, and offers translation, dubbing, voiceover, and subtitling services.
Voiceover and dubbing market size
The global market for dubbing and voiceover services was estimated to be more than 4.4 billion dollars in 2017. This market has grown exponentially in the last five years due to the increasing demand for animated and video advertisements for their products. The platforms on which these videos can be shown have grown so much that a meaningful change has happened in the voiceover market.
Another factor that guarantees this market’s continuous growth is the increasing demand for online education and online teaching websites. The post-pandemic world cannot be content with going back to school or university to learn new skills anymore, and this increases the need for video courses that can be bought online. All these factors have culminated in the growth of the human voiceover industry, a market that AI and computers can never replace.
