magpie pro

stephen23 · Post by **stephen23** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 9:14 am

I am just a newbie at AS Pro and am on a steep learning curve at the moment. I have downloaded a trial of Magpie Pro and was wondering if it is worth paying the $250 to use it. Does anyone have any experience of using this programme and is the extra expense worth it? It seems that a lot of the facilities in Magpie do not apply to AS Pro so is there really a greater benefit over Papagayo?

J. Baker · Post by **J. Baker** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 1:44 pm

You don't need it. You can actually just scrub the audio inside of AnimeStudio and apply the correct switch layer at each frame. That's the method I find best. Or use Papagayo if you prefer it.

InfoCentral · Post by **InfoCentral** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 1:45 pm

AS6 has build in lip sync so you don't need Papagayo. If your looking for external lip sync programs than Papagayo is free, Magpie Pro is expensive, and Crazy Talk is in the middle ground.

stephen23 · Post by **stephen23** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 8:45 am

Thanks for saving me $250 guys...

akgarner · Post by **akgarner** » Wed Aug 26, 2009 2:00 pm

"AS6 has built i lip sync?"

Hm. Not sure about that InfoCentral. If you want to do matched phenome lip-sync you're going to need Papagayo at least. AS6 will import the .dat file it generates with the accurate keyframing.

AS6 does audio-level syncing. Basically opening a mouth when the audio level goes up or down. Doesn't look very good to me though. Sort of a cheap way of doing it.

Papagayo is nice for short clips, but it's not very robust. Magpie looks VERY robust, but... you can get away with Papagayo if you're patient.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Wed Aug 26, 2009 3:09 pm

akgarner wrote:
AS6 does audio-level syncing. Basically opening a mouth when the audio level goes up or down. Doesn't look very good to me though. Sort of a cheap way of doing it.

No, actually AS 6 has a Papagayo-ish feature "built in". This is for AS Pro only. You bring in an audio layer and open the settings for it. In the audio tab is a text field to type in the spoken words. Then you open the layer settings for a switch layer with your 10 phonemes and in the switch tab use the select audio sync source: menu and choose the audio layer.

Some have said it isn't as accurate as it could be but I've used it few times for short dialog with fairly good results... quick and dirty... you will need to tweak it most likely. It all depends on whether you want to tweak the sync in Papagayo or AS.

-vern

akgarner · Post by **akgarner** » Wed Aug 26, 2009 3:58 pm

Ah! I stand corrected. You know, in the AS6PRO tutorials there's NOTHING about using it. Only about using Papagayo. Isn't that strange?

To the point of this thread : I think Papagayo is reasonably good. I've never used Magpie. I guess as a well-seasoned protools/sound-track audio guy I assume it would work in a certain way for ease of use. But, I'm adapting.

Basic editing commands to slip/slid/ripple/roll the phrasing around would make it immensely easy to work with. I find I fight with the placement in the timeline and do a LOT of double duty moving adjacent phrasing to make room for the previous. I end up working in reverse a lot of the time, which, well, indicates a workflow problem with the software.

b15fliptop · Post by **b15fliptop** » Wed Aug 26, 2009 5:58 pm

I have used all of the aforementioned methods of lip sync, and it really depends on how much you plan on doing. My stuff is heavily dialog dependent, and I'm kind of a stickler for accurate lip sync, so for me, Magpie Pro is worth it. I don't even use the auto lip sync aspect of Magpie, because you still spend a lot of time moving around phonemes that it puts in the wrong place. What I do is assign phonemes to hot keys, and then just step through the dialog with the arrow keys and type the phonemes in with the hot keys. It sounds tedious, but it actually goes really quickly after you do it a few times, and is unmatched as far as accuracy goes. If you aren't doing a ton of lip sync, Papagayo is definitely serviceable.