Voice Dubbing Experiment

Jim H wrote on 6/21/2006, 7:38 PM
I had this footage of the track coach singing the National Anthem at the annual awards cerimony last week and I could resist trying a little experiment with dubbing in a new sound track. The method was simple and took about a half hour. It could use some more tweaking but I proved the method works well and could probably be applied to any dubbing situation.

I tapped out markers to both sound tracks being careful to hit every syllable. Theoretically, this should leave you with the same numbers of markers in each.
Then I chopped the video up into little parts at each marker and stretched or shrank them to line up with the markers on the replacement sound track.
Because this coach really couldn't sing all that well, he never held a note for more that a beat or two so you'll see some section where I had to practically stop the tape to hold those long notes.

It was a fun little project, enjoy:



Edit: Speaking of slowing down events. Why is it that you can slow down an event with velocity envelopes to 0% but when Ctl stretching you can only get to 25%? What a pain trying to be precise when your clip end is sliding all over the place.

Comments

Bob Greaves wrote on 6/21/2006, 8:26 PM
I absolutely love it
JackW wrote on 6/21/2006, 8:56 PM
Great work. Very effective way of doing this, too. Thanks for sharing.

Jack
johnmeyer wrote on 6/21/2006, 9:13 PM
Why is it that you can slow down an event with velocity envelopes to 0% but when Ctl stretching you can only get to 25%? What a pain trying to be precise when your clip end is sliding all over the place

Don't know. The bigger question is why is the velocity envelope interface so non-intuitive that it is almost unusable? In particular, your problem should have been a cinch to do, given the wonderful technology that underlies the velocity envelope. However, there is almost no way I know of to get exact frames of video to line up at an exact moment in time on the timeline, using the velocity envelopes. And, heaven help you if you cut the even in the middle of an envelope.

Anyway, your solution of cutting and then stretching is an excellent one, although obviously the result could have been even better if you didn't have those speed discontinuities as you go from one event to another.
TShaw wrote on 6/21/2006, 9:14 PM
Jim, that was good. Thanks.

Terry
earthrisers wrote on 6/22/2006, 3:10 AM
Just wonderful.

If I thought he was lip-synching to a recording, I'd be amused and mildly impressed.
But knowing how you synched him to the recording, I'm amused and AMAZED.
DGates wrote on 6/22/2006, 4:15 AM
Very cool. Nice work! You may have a career in ADR.
t-keats wrote on 6/22/2006, 5:35 AM
That is ssoooooooooo spooky. Nice job of lip syncing.
plasmavideo wrote on 6/22/2006, 6:40 AM
Jim,

Thanks for a great morning laugh!
Yoyodyne wrote on 6/23/2006, 2:16 AM
Good singer - I was expecting his voice to be lower though :)