Trouble opening audio and some thoughts

[rylleman]

I can't open my audio-files in Papagayo, the sample files inluded with it opens just fine but when I try to open my own it doesn't work, I've tried diffrerent formats, mp3 and wav with different settings.
Which format should audio files be in for Papagayo to read them?

When scrubbing there is no bar as it is when you just play the audio, hard to see exactly where you are, a fix would be nice, please.

Phonetic breakdown. This only works for american english, having to type in guides for every word in other languages is tedious work, and in some extent double work since you after that have to adjust the phonemes to fit the audio, I prefer to do my own audio breakdown frame by frame which leads me to my final thought;

Adding phonemes by hand - Automatic phonetic breakdown never works 100% satisfactory, often you will want to add some phonetic or replace one thats not right, a way to do this in Papagayo (maybe with a right-click dropdown menu with mouthshapes) would also open up for manual syncing.

Papagayo has the potential to be great but for now I'm sticking to JLipSync.

[Lost Marble]

Can you open these other files in Moho, using the soundtrack feature? Can you open them with the QuickTime Player? What version of QuickTime do you have installed?

Papagayo uses QuickTime to open sound files, so any format that QuickTime supports should work. In fact, you can even open .mov files and Papagayo will use the audio track.

If you have an up-to-date version of QuickTime and it still doesn't work, feel free to email one of the problem audio files to support@lostmarble.com

Yes, Papagayo only works for English. The design of the program is to make it easier to sync words by doing some of the phonetic work for you. This is a lot less tedious than entering and placing every phoneme by hand. Unfortunately, it makes the program rather language-specific. We wanted to make something easier to use, but the only pronunciation dictionary I know of is in English. If you need to do manual phoneme placement then there are other software choices out there.

[rylleman]

Can you open these other files in Moho, using the soundtrack feature? Can you open them with the QuickTime Player? What version of QuickTime do you have installed?

Yes, I'm using the files in Moho now and I don't have any problem with them there and I can open them in the QTplayer (V6.5.2) but they doesn't work in Papagayo... It seems like there is some kind of compression issue since I can open other audio files.

Yes, Papagayo only works for English. The design of the program is to make it easier to sync words by doing some of the phonetic work for you. This is a lot less tedious than entering and placing every phoneme by hand. Unfortunately, it makes the program rather language-specific. We wanted to make something easier to use, but the only pronunciation dictionary I know of is in English. If you need to do manual phoneme placement then there are other software choices out there.

Yes, I get what you're saying but having the ability to add or change mouth shapes by hand would give you the possibility of a more accurate lipsync even if you do the most of the work automaticly, as I said before, all people doesn't pronounce words the same or talk after some phonetic dictionary, often you would want to change some mouth shape or add/remove another to get a satisfactory result.

[Lost Marble]

Can you email one of these problem audio files to support@lostmarble.com?

You can change the pronunciation of any particular word by right-clicking on the word in the waveform view. But changing the phonemes for a couple words here and there is different from entering them all from scratch.

[rylleman]

Can you email one of these problem audio files to support@lostmarble.com?

Mailed.

You can change the pronunciation of any particular word by right-clicking on the word in the waveform view. But changing the phonemes for a couple words here and there is different from entering them all from scratch.

Ah, now I'm a bit embarrased, I didn't try that, I tried to change things down in the phonemes part. Then my largest issue with Papagayo is solved...

However, I've noticed some other stuff now that I've played around with it a bit more.

P. doesn't seem to remember which folder I was in last if I close and open it again, it always start in c:\documents_and_settings which is a bit annoying since I never have anything there.

P. doesn't seem to remember words I've typed after I have been asked how they are pronounced, have to type in the same words for every new audiofile.

9 mouth shapes is in my opinion way to few.

And that timebar mentioned in my first post would be great!

Cheers!

[Lost Marble]

Yes, there are definitely some improvements we can add in the future. A user dictionary is one of the top items on the list.

As far as the phoneme set, I guess it depends on your animation style. The Preston Blair set is a quite common set of mouth shapes for cartoon animation. If you're going for a more realistic look, then yes, it's probably too few. It's easy to customize the phoneme set in Papagayo, but right now the method of doing that is not user-accessible. Making it more flexible in that way is also on the list for the future.

[rylleman]

I found out why I couldn't open some audio files before.
The folder containing the audio had the letter å in it, renaming it solved the issue.
Just though I'd post this if someone else encounters the same problem.

[Agent]

Oh yes i have the same problem. I can't load any files just the samples, they don't have any special characters and i could open them with QuickTime.

[Agent]

ouch the directory had special character that was the problem