Suggestion for Papagayo 2.x

[Rhoel]

Papagayo is a dream to use - Fast and efficient. it does its job very well.

However, two small changes would make it better.

1: Spacebar = play.

My own thoughts are the useability would be better if the space bar was allocated to PLAY, and not for breaking down the sound as it is at present - in may other programs such as Premier, the space bar is used for playback - it feels more natural this way.

Unfortunately, I find old habits die hard and its too easy at present for me to hit the space bar and have all the adjusted work lost. Its a very small quible - its still the most user friendly lip-sync tool around, and faster/more adjustable than Magpie Pro (Pity there is no output for 3dMax and Maya - to ask for that would be too much for a program designed and dedicated to Moho - that said, I am trying to get my head around the source code to see if I can add a sub-routine for that: Might be easier/faster for me to write a C prog to batch process the .dat files).

2: Adjustable amplitude threshold.
The program does not always pick up silent lead-in / silent between sentences. - it often starts the phonetics at frame 1 or joins the two sentences together, thereby throwing the lip-sync. Its easy to adjust at present. However, it would be nice if there was a preset for adjusting the amplitude threshold, so the user can adapt the "gain" to suit the recordings ... when you have actors recording in theor own home studions, the results can (how do I say politely) .... vary somewhat.

Rhoel

[Lost Marble]

Regarding #2: Papagayo pays no attention to the sound amplitude whatsoever. It's not a matter of adjustment - this feature does not currently exist at all. It might be nice if it could do some amplitude-based alignment, but there will always be mistakes, so the priority to start with was to make it easy to manually align phrases/words/phonemes.

[Rhoel]

Regarding #2: Papagayo pays no attention to the sound amplitude whatsoever. It's not a matter of adjustment - this feature does not currently exist at all. It might be nice if it could do some amplitude-based alignment, but there will always be mistakes, so the priority to start with was to make it easy to manually align phrases/words/phonemes.

OKay.

So is there a way in that case of making the software detect the mid-sentence breaks? Currently, I split a dialogue line like "Of course I can do this ..... maybe", this way in the dailaogue box.

Of course I can do this.
Maybe.

This splits the sentence into the two word groups - I then slide the "Maybe" phonetics group past the silent pause, to the correct place as indicated by the waveform. IF you want me to forward a problem cli[ to ypu then just ask.

If the mod can't be done then fine, its a minor problem. At the end of the day, it's still a damn good program.

Rhoel.

[Lost Marble]

The way you're using it - splitting a phrase into multiple lines if there's a pause - is exactly the way it's meant to be used. Splitting phrases up across pause boundaries makes it much easier to align the two sides. Of course, automatic detection of the waveform would make it even easier.

I understand what you're asking for - it's not impossible, it just isn't a feature of the software (at least not yet). It seems quite straightforward for the example you describe. The problem comes in if you have more than one person speaking, or if there is background music or sound effects. Automatically detecting a break in those cases becomes a much more difficult problem.

[dienben]

Hello,

I think that if we could play only a part of the sequence, it could be helpfull.

For exemple, if we could just have 2 fields: start and end, with the number of the beginning and ending frame...

Congratulation for your work.

Dienben

[Guest]

You can already play separately a phrase/sentence, a word, and a phoneme marker - just double-click on the object you want to hear.

Or you can pick any arbitrary part already.
To hear a segment that is not defined by a part of speech (word/phrase/phoneme), just define a new voice, put in any word, and use that word region to define any segment of sound you want to play separately - move the word beginning and end to any particular begin and end frames you want to use.
You could also use a sentence/phrase region this way.

Regards, Myles.

[dienben]

Hello,

Nice tip! Thanks for your answer.

Dienben

[anopheles]

Lets say you you have a nice sound clip you want to use, but the automatic detection doesn't pick up anything because there are so many sound effects etc. in the soundclip.

Solution:

Record yourself saying the same sentence in the same speed etc and use that sound clip for reference.

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What do you think about that one?

[guest]

I have trouble with the speed of papagayo when I used large files of dialogue, I have to wait 5 seconds per action for a 2 and a half min piece of dialogue. Maybe a larger cache for the sound or a different program to handle sound files instead of quicktime which can be processor heavy and slow. the files should be easy to access, loaded in memory and readily available, even larger files, like when you edit in a program like goldwave for example.

Also the inabailty to pick out certain areas of sound instead of playing the entire sound file from start to finish is a pain. Maybe a selection of part of the sound would be handy to focus on specific areas for playback when lining up dialogue. a pause button too. and the ability to add words after theyve already been put in without reseting the entire positioning of the entered in dialogue.

Keep the simplicity, it's its main strength!!!!!!!

Thanx Lost Marble

[jahnocli]

Two and a half minutes of dialogue?! Break it up! Not just for papagayo, think about your audience...

[guest]

Its not monolgue if thats what your thinking... Its for the majority of the sound design aswell and other characters dialogue. I do break it up, believe me! This is where papagayo loses out, and Moho too because you can't channel various tracks of sound over the top of one another. That actually could be a suggestion for Moho too!