Customers sometimes ask us whether SitePal characters’ lip animation can be improved.
Well, if you are using human recorded audio then the answer is yes! We recently launched a very useful update we’d like to make you aware of.
Note:
- This improvement applies only to 3D characters & works only for English for now
- For TTS – the improvement is automatically applied – see explanation below
When you upload (or record) an audio, you will now see a “transcript” section where you can add… yes, a text transcript of the audio.
The text transcript is used to improve our automated lip-sync analysis and produce better results.
How much better?
We put together two SitePal Scenes for you to compare. “Before” and “After” if you will. Unlike the Pepsi challenge – you’ll need to keep your eyes open! Take a look:
Uploaded without transcript: www.sitepal.com/geturl/?ss=2756599&sl=0&acc=7029566
Uploaded with transcript: www.sitepal.com/geturl/?ss=2756598&sl=0&acc=7029566
As you can see the improvement is noticeable. So when adding audios to your account do take the time to add a text transcript to each audio, it is well worth the effort. To apply this improvement to existing (recorded or uploaded) audios, you would need to re-upload your audios and enter a text transcript for each.
The other (unrelated) advantage of adding a text transcript to your audio is that it enables subtitle display. If subtitles are relevant to your implementation – we suggest reading the technical note “Adding Subtitles to your Scene”, on our support page.
Note:
- for TTS (both static and dynamic) adding a transcript is usually unnecessary because the text used to generate the audio is automatically applied to enhance the Lip-Sync as well. So there’s nothing you need to do. But in some cases you may still benefit from adding transcript to your TTS text input. That might be the case if your TTS text is heavily phonetic, or contains SSML tags. A good way to think about it is: TTS text is meant to be machine readable. The transcript is meant to be human readable (whether used for Lip-Sync or subtitles or both). To the extent the TTS text is modified to enhance the former, you might benefit from the latter.
Oh, before we forget – do check out our new AI Demo – if you haven’t done so already! See – www.aispeechdemo.com
We’re actively working on additional features & capabilities (and new characters!) to be added soon… Stay tuned for more information.
Warm regards,
The SitePal Team
“What does your site say?”
