SUGGESTION: Papagaya support for Lip-Sync

[Misj']

Hi,

Every now and then I play around with AGS, and a while ago I got interested in the lip-sync option (although I really hope that at some point in time Chris will be able to implement it for LucasArts style of speech). However, Pamela frustrates me (some women have that effect...don't always know why).

A visually more appealing program is Papagaya from Lost Marble (http://www.lostmarble.com/papagayo/index.shtml). There are some limitations to the software, but the savefiles are quite simple (they resemble Pamela's), it's free, and it's open-source (http://www.lostmarble.com/downloads/papagayo_1.1_source.zip).

My request is low priority; especially without lucasarts-speech-support (how many people actually use the lip sync option anyway?), but I would really like to see Papagaya-support for future use.

Misj'

[Pumaman]

Would anyone else be interested in this?

[strazer]

Yes, Lip-sync for LucasArts speech would be nice.
And although it looks nice, I don't see the benefit of supporting Papagaya too, since Pamela is also open-source.

Misj', there's a Linux binary, so that's a plus for me, but could you tell us more about its advantages aside from its visual appeal?

[HeirOfNorton]

If you were to add another file format for lipsync, I would suggest the Moho switch file format. This is the timing data that is used within Moho for lipsyncing purposes. Papagayo and Pamela can both export into this format, as can Magpie and JLipSync, so supporting it would give users the greatest variety of options for their projects.

HoN

[Misj']

And although it looks nice, I don't see the benefit of supporting Papagaya too, since Pamela is also open-source.

Misj', there's a Linux binary, so that's a plus for me, but could you tell us more about its advantages aside from its visual appeal?

Well, looks do matter (don't believe dr. Phil on this; I'm sorry, but it's not only the inside that counts). But I have to agree that if it were only the looks I wouldn't really care (or maybe I would, but that's besides the point right now).

Two of the main advantages I see over Pamela are: an easy expandable dictionary (plus the possibility to use multiple dictionaries), furthermore, localization of the phonetics is based both the alignment of phrases, words, and phonemes rather than only the latter. Now I admit that alignment of phrases is of limited use, since since one would normally use seperate soundfiles for seperate phrases. But the use of alignment by words is quite useful (and speed enhancing), after which the phenomes can be used to optimize the alignment.

So basically speed and easyness (at least to me) are the advantages. But these two weight quite heavy assuming that a game has more than ten phrases of spoken dialogue. However, there are also two clear disadvantages. First off, I have not been able to remove a phoneme. This can be annoying at times for fast spoken sentences. Also, I've not been able to change a phoneme (within the program, not the dictionary). So the program isn't perfect...

If you were to add another file format for lipsync, I would suggest the Moho switch file format.

The disadvantage of the Moho file format is, that it does not include the soundfile. However, since the AGS-manual statesÃ, 

Use the Pamela application on each of your speech lines, and save a Pamela project file (.pam file) for each speech file, naming it the same as the speech.

For example, the pamela project for EGO46.MP3 would be called EGO46.PAM, placed in your game folder.

I assume Chris is not using the soundfile included in the pamela project anyhow. If that's true, I'd say your suggestion is more elegant than mine.


Misj'

[IceMan]

Further lip-synch support is something I am SERIOUSLY crossing my fingers for with the next AGS release.  Papagaya seems pretty good, but I'm fine with Pamela.  Cheers for bringing this up!

[Janik]

I've had good success in trials with Magpie, exported to Pamela format. The best part is the automatic lip-synching function! Not a free program though