Voice-activated or fixed speed: which teleprompter should you use?

Fixed speed: the script sets the pace

• Predictable length. A timed scroll finishes exactly when you tell it to, which matters for adverts, broadcast slots and anything cut to music.
• Works anywhere. It does not need to hear you, so a noisy location or a quiet delivery makes no difference.
• Steady delivery. A constant pace suits formal reads: announcements, legal wording, narration.
• The cost is that you cannot pause to think. If you stop, the script does not.

Voice tracking: you set the pace

• Natural rhythm. You slow down for emphasis and speed up through the easy parts, which is how people actually talk.
• Room to improvise. Add a sentence that is not in the script and the text waits for you.
• Nothing to tune. There is no speed setting to get wrong and no rehearsal spent matching one.
• The cost is that the length is no longer fixed, and that tracking needs to hear you clearly.

How to choose

Ask one question: does the finished piece have to be an exact length? If it does, use a fixed or timed scroll. If it does not, voice tracking will almost always give you the more natural delivery, because it removes the one thing that makes prompted speech sound prompted, which is a constant pace.

A second question decides the difficult cases: can the app hear you? On a windy street or beside machinery, fixed speed is the reliable choice whatever the content.

Many people use both. Voice tracking for the conversational body of a video, and a timed scroll for the fifteen-second sponsor read that has to land on the beat.

For the fixed-speed side in detail, see how to use a teleprompter. For how tracking works, see how a voice-activated teleprompter works.