Timing techniques for voiceovers on short pieces?

Most of my projects at work are emercials and informational pieces, ranging anywhere from a minute to 4 or 5 minutes. Most are animated, but sometimes I use video and photography.

Either way, due to timing constraints, sometimes the voiceover scripts aren't completely finished when I start working on the actual video portion. I usually record the VO on the back end, clean it up, and then re-time the video and animations based on the speed of the VO.

Is this normal? If so, does anyone have any suggestions as to how to more accurately time a piece when all I have so far is an accurate, but unapproved script? Do some of you do a rough VO on your own for timing purposes up front, ahead of video creation?

Re-timing is normal and one of the most annoying parts of the job for me. We do scratch tracks, which help, but it's never perfect. Plus script changes usually happen almost all the way up to the day of delivery. I use a few scripts to help me retime things:

rd_Scooter
rd_Shifter

Keeping your layers trimmed is essential as well. I use the following script to order my layers by in-point from the bottom up.

rd_KindaSorta

I'm sure there are a lot of other scripts that are helpful, but you'll have to search around and experiment.

Dan Fredley