audio

[rammstein_fan]

First, i want to say that my english is very bad. Probably you will see lots of grammar errors in this post. Sorry for that

Well, i'm thinking about buying this software. I love to make animations, and until now i was using stuff like pivot, useless programs that dont take me anywhere.

I want to give " a jump ", i have the money, and I really want to buy the Anime Studio Pro.

But, I have a question. It's about the audio. I heard that the program only supports 1 track per animation. Is this truth? If it is, how can I make more complex animations with more audio tracks? Maybe with other video editor, like windows movie maker... But that won't bring me problems like, synch problems, like mouth synch with the voice?

I really need answers to this, and, if possible, solutions

[Genete]

Hi!
Read this advice from LM (the original creator of Moho -the previous version-).
And regarding to sync problems I think there is no really none problem because you should make your long animations splitting it into scenes and mainly one file per scene. Later the combination in a non linear video editor would allow you sync one scene with other with no problem.

Good election if you finally buy it.
-G

[andyriley]

The advice to use a video editor to add audio is valid but there's one thing that I'm not sure about - and that's lip synching with, say, Papagayo.

I would imagine that the single track of audio within AS would be used to provide the "voice track" to use with Papagayo. That means that the rendered video file would then be used with a video editor to add things like music, sound effects, merging scenes into a longer finish file, etc.

Would this be correct?

[slowtiger]

A sound file has a fixed "speed", so no matter where you import it, it will always play at the same speed.

A video file has a playback rate which can be nearly anything. But no matter wether you work with 12 fps or 24 fps, a second will be a second. So all your lipsync will work.

The only problem occurs when you import your movie from AS into some video editor. You need to experiment a bit to make sure that a second of animation will be a second of video. Once you find the correct setting for this, adding audio will be no problem.

[FCSnow]

It would be much better to use a program like Audacity (which is free). Create your multiple sound tracks and combine them into one. Then import that single track into AS-Pro. I've done this before and it works for me.

F.C.Snow

[rammstein_fan]

It would be much better to use a program like Audacity (which is free). Create your multiple sound tracks and combine them into one. Then import that single track into AS-Pro. I've done this before and it works for me.

F.C.Snow

Yes, i was thinking about that. But, how can I be sure about the synch? I mean, if i want to synch the voice with the mouth, with the mouth making the right movements to the voice, that will bring me problems :S

[heyvern]

The key to syncing audio to animation is to make sure the animation at a minimum STARTS at the exact beginning of the audio file. Make sure the time is the same.

If you crop or change the length of the animation syncing it later will be more difficult because you have to shift the audio. Better off cropping AFTER it is in your external video compositing software.

If you do lip sync animation to a sound file, the animation should be the same length as the animation.

That is what I do. I break up the dialog into as many "chunks" as I need to and animate them in as many different AS files as I want. I make the animation the exact length of the audio. Dropping in the audio later is a piece of cake because they match perfectly.

I can then cut and edit these scenes in the editing process all I want as long as I keep them "connected".

AS will always start the sound at the very beginning of the timeline. I know if I line up those two things they will be in sync... making sure of course the FPS or length matches.

If you put all the dialog in one huge sound file you have to make sure that all the animation is based on the length of that file. If character one doesn't start talking until half way through, you can't cheat and only animate when he starts. You leave blank frames even when he isn't talking to keep the timing right.

Or you could use camera cuts to switch from one character to the next during the animation... you still need those "gaps" in the animated dialog for each character so it is easier later to keep the audio synced.

It's like using multiple cameras on a film or television show. They film the whole scene from each camera angle then edit them later. When you see a film of two people talking that cuts back and forth, they shot both sides in it's entirety... then cut back and forth later.

-vern

[Genete]

Only one remark to heyvern's advices. The soundtrack starts at the frame where the Project Settings are set. Not necessary that must be frame 1, it could be any frame.
So if you have one character speaking from frame 200 to 300 then set your project settings to start frame = 200 and end frame = 300. The imported sound track would go there. You can render that piece of animation and later import to a video editor and the audio would go with the animation. Later you can insert sound effects like background sounds and or concatenate other pieces of animation.

Other thing is the place of the keyframes that the automatic switch settings do with the data source form Papagayo. It probably should be shifted from frame 1 to the frame 200. I don't have much experience with Papagayo.

-G

[rammstein_fan]

well, thanks everybody =) i think i will use audacy to solve this problem

[FCSnow]

Before you start your project, consider this, since the early sound day of animation (ie Steamboat Willy), cartoonist always sync the lips or actions to the sound, not sound to the action. Altough I haven't always done this, it does make things easer.

F.C.Snow