I have the basic version and it is fantastic software. Animation follows voice recording and looks very realistic! Relatively easy to use.

Post a link to some of the projects you've used CrazyTalk on.

I did a Sweet 16 video a couple years ago and used Crazy Talk on a photo of Marilyn Monroe to have her say Happy Birthday to the birthday girl. Nice tool.

Jerry

I have used Crazy Talk for a couple of my TV Productions. I am currently getting Certified training in their iclone 3.2 3d software. I plan on a making a feature film using Vegas and iclone. A new upgrade to iclone will be released in Oct. that will allow video to be a layer in the project. This would give After Effects a big run for its money since it costs under $200.00 for the software. Plus you can make cute little puppies talk.

I have CrazyTalk 6 Pro. Very cool.

A few hours after reading this post the request for a 'Talking Dog' came in.
Quick & Easy... I got the dog talking and synced to the VO. -- really cute!

Am having problems doing another Dog that has his mouth open though.

OK, I bought it. Wow this is a hoot! My 9 year old son and I just spent about an hour playing with it. I think this is his favorite software that isn't a video game!

Just downloaded the demo and played with it a bit. Not too bad but you might actually have to read the instructions to get it right. They could use some antialiasing around the objects. Fun time waster!

Around the objects you need to do some masking and put in a different background. You can do it in CrazyTalk or better yet do it in Photoshop.

I have had great results with CT Pro. I take a dog's photo, pull it into Photoshop Elements 2.0 (talk about not buying upgrades!!), trim the dog's head out, put a green background behind it, and save it as a jpg. Then I animate it in CT.

The interface wasn't very intuitive, a lot of trial and error, but I got it to work. They have changed the interface in the latest version ( a couple of months old), but I will have to learn it because there are new features I want to use.

This is one of a series of short videos we show to people joining the local dog park (we require attendance at an orientation session put on by volunteers). This vignette was shot on an old Nikon 1.0 pixel point and shoot, edited in Vegas 7.0 on a laptop during a roadtrip, and more recently updated with the talking dog in 9.0a. (Okay, so I do buy some upgrades).

The dog is about 27 seconds into the video. Music by Cinescore. Dog's voice is the narrator's, pitch altered by Sound Forge.

http://www.vimeo.com/4854144

Here is something I did with Crazy Talk and Vegas for a Ecology teacher going to a National Teachers Convention. He wanted to get more teachers to house the program. The frog is a default character that came with the software. I did this complete video in a couple hours not days.


http://www.vimeo.com/2181554

Digital Juice had this for half price a while back. It pays to watch for their 3rd party deals. I have had luck with contacting the publisher directly when I missed a DJ deal in the past and they still honored the price. It's worth a try before paying full price.

I bought the half-price deal from DJ, and two days later, I got a request for an animated computer mouse. The client was thrilled with the demo. We're still working on the final project.

just installed it and in 20 minutes had my dog talking...I need to animate some faces for a background projection in a ballet production and this should do the trick...thanks for the heads up!

I previously provided a link to the talking dog I had created to zoom out of an orientation video for the local dog park. I have had a couple people ask how I got rid of the white bars Crazy Talk 6 had used to pad out the image size when it rendered the AVI file.

If you are having the same problem, just specify the border color to be the same as your original photo's background color on the output options page. The hard way is:

1. I created the background color in PSE as a custom color, and recorded the Hue, Sat, Brightness, R, G, and B values. In my case I like to use 120, 100, 100, 0, 255, 0, and write them down. Then in CT, on the output screen, there is a place to set "border color". Click on the color sample box, create the same custom color, ( use 120, 100, 100, 0, 255, 0 ) and your problem is solved. (It looks like CT can save that custom color).*

2. Before I saw the border color setting, I used event pan/crop and masked out the white bars, and then used track motion to do the zoom and translate. I tried event pan crop, but it only works if the aspect ratio of the usable image is pretty close to the Vegas project aspect ratio, if not, then the event pan crop may knock off some of the useful image, at least as far as I can tell. (I find pan crop to be really hard to use, very non-intuitive, unlike the rest of Vegas).

*Method 1 is the best.*

BTW I am using CT Pro 6.1, apparently a maintenance release.

The CT online help file says that if you bring in a png with an alpha channel, CT will not destroy it. I have not been able to achieve that yet. If I do, it will do away with the chroma key, which takes time to render.

For anyone in the UK, PC Advisor magazine has version 5 SE as a cover mount this month. I don't normally buy magazines based on included discs, but after watching that video, I might get it to have a play.

Paul

Here are some videos I did with Vegas and iclone.
http://www.vimeo.com/user390247/videos