vizact.speak

[Deltcho]

Hi Philippe,

I've been working with making avatars talk as well. Maybe I can share some of the things that I've found to work.

As masaki has already suggested, using audio editing software is key. I've personally had *a lot* of success using a standard noise cancellation PC mic (ZALMAN ZM-MIC -- costs about $5-10). The mic clips onto the collar of your shirt.

Here's the process I came up with:

1) Record the audio using proper audio software (I personally use Acoustica but I'm sure other ones work just as well.) When speaking, speak in a *natural tone* as if you were talking to someone else in the room.

2) Normalize volume in the speech file to 20 db (all recorded files should be normalized to this for best results with my settings.)

3) Run a noise reduction filter on it.

4) Export the file as a mono 16-bit PCM file (very important for proper syncing).

5) Use a scale value of 0.028 and a threshold of 0.0001

I've currently got 4 pages of dialogue lip synced perfectly using this method. I also recommend tweaking vizact.py to sync the lips more often (described in my other post.)

I'll try and post a video demonstrating the end result if I have time.