Need help with sequencing singing faces

[Grady29]

Hello,

I am trying to learn how to sequence singing faces.  I did a RGB singing tree last year manually and it took me a super long time.   I did 1 singing tree from Gilbert Engineering and it came out ok for a novice, but I was soooooo slow.  I feel even as a novice, I am missing tricks to making the process a little less frustrating.  I literally slowed down the playback to 1/2x speed, observed the wavelength of the song and listened to the words one-by-one and then sequenced the singing mouth according to the words/wavelength. I feel like I am going about it wrong.  I have read some messages in the forums and it seems everyone has a little different way of doing it.  I found some people using SuperStar and others seem to do it the manual way.  It seems the manual way might give a little more realistic singing face but slower than the Super Star.  I tried to use the SuperStar demo but I ran into some road blocks.  The videos I watched using Super Star used a different prop than the Gilbert Engineering prop I am using and I wasn't able to follow along with the video completely as there were screens that were different due to the prop I am using.  Also, I only have access to the demo version to SuperStar and before I invest in the non-demo version, I wanted to try and get some input if that should be the route I should take.

Any help you could provide in either pointing me towards some forum chats that discuss how to sequence singing faces for novices or tips/tricks you would be willing to share would be extremely appreciated.

My profile reflects my current version and license level.

[Box on Rails]

I would suggest using Papagayo and ItsmeBobO's conversion program, Papagayo to LOR to Make clipboards that can be imported into the sequence. Check out his page for more info. http://itsmebob.com/SD.html  I have tried Superstar and done it Manually and they did NOT work for me as well as Papagayo. BobO's page also has tutorial videos. It ain't perfect but It's free and way faster then Manually doing it.

Edited August 17, 2023 by Box on Rails

[dibblejr]

On 8/16/2023 at 10:25 PM, Grady29 said:

Hello,

I am trying to learn how to sequence singing faces.  I did a RGB singing tree last year manually and it took me a super long time.   I did 1 singing tree from Gilbert Engineering and it came out ok for a novice, but I was soooooo slow.  I feel even as a novice, I am missing tricks to making the process a little less frustrating.  I literally slowed down the playback to 1/2x speed, observed the wavelength of the song and listened to the words one-by-one and then sequenced the singing mouth according to the words/wavelength. I feel like I am going about it wrong.  I have read some messages in the forums and it seems everyone has a little different way of doing it.  I found some people using SuperStar and others seem to do it the manual way.  It seems the manual way might give a little more realistic singing face but slower than the Super Star.  I tried to use the SuperStar demo but I ran into some road blocks.  The videos I watched using Super Star used a different prop than the Gilbert Engineering prop I am using and I wasn't able to follow along with the video completely as there were screens that were different due to the prop I am using.  Also, I only have access to the demo version to SuperStar and before I invest in the non-demo version, I wanted to try and get some input if that should be the route I should take.

Any help you could provide in either pointing me towards some forum chats that discuss how to sequence singing faces for novices or tips/tricks you would be willing to share would be extremely appreciated.

My profile reflects my current version and license level.

There are no "tricks". I started with papagayo long ago and went to sequencing faces manually. Nothing beats manually and I am actually pretty fast at it. Normal entire Pentatonix sequence in 4-6 hours. You just have to practice.

Both papagayo and SS you can do one singer at a time, I do all 4 and more at the same time, I have done a 36 singer mashup in 8 hours. It also has nothing to do with the prop. ou can sequence any prop with the same number of mouth movements and use it on any prop. I sequence my pumpkins for ALL 5 mouth sequences (non RGB) and transfer them to whichever prop I need the sequence in.

If you are talking about the GE Monster Trees I have 2 of them in my shows, still use my pumpkin sequences after I change the colors to what I want for a song.

 

[Mica]

On 8/17/2023 at 5:34 AM, Box on Rails said:

I would suggest using Papagayo and ItsmeBobO's conversion program, Papagayo to LOR to Make clipboards that can be imported into the sequence. Check out his page for more info. http://itsmebob.com/SD.html  I have tried Superstar and done it Manually and they did NOT work for me as well as Papagayo. BobO's page also has tutorial videos. It ain't perfect but It's free and way faster then Manually doing it.

I tried to get papagayo to work on my PC, it loaded but wouldn't operate. I don't know if my PC is too new or what.

[Box on Rails]

7 hours ago, Mica said:

I tried to get papagayo to work on my PC, it loaded but wouldn't operate. I don't know if my PC is too new or what.

Are you trying to load .mp3 files? I ask because if you load an mp3 file it will not work. Papagayo  only works with .wav files. I also use only portions of the full song .wav file that contain only the lyrics sections. There is no need to load sections that only have music and no lyrics.  learning Papagayo does take some practice. If it will help, I have a small collection of completed songs that I could share. These sequences have only the faces sequenced. I could include all the related .wav files I used to create the sequence including the sequence file. This way you have something to load into Papayago that is completed and learn how it all works. PM me if interested and I'll let you what songs I have to share. 

Kenny Jure

[Mica]

8 hours ago, Box on Rails said:

Are you trying to load .mp3 files? I ask because if you load an mp3 file it will not work. Papagayo  only works with .wav files. I also use only portions of the full song .wav file that contain only the lyrics sections. There is no need to load sections that only have music and no lyrics.  learning Papagayo does take some practice. If it will help, I have a small collection of completed songs that I could share. These sequences have only the faces sequenced. I could include all the related .wav files I used to create the sequence including the sequence file. This way you have something to load into Papayago that is completed and learn how it all works. PM me if interested and I'll let you what songs I have to share. 

Kenny Jure

I will try converting a audio file to. Wav and see if that works. Thank you. It just kept giving me error messages.

[Box on Rails]

5 hours ago, Mica said:

I will try converting a audio file to. Wav and see if that works. Thank you. It just kept giving me error messages.

Does the Papagayo  program start up or is that where you are getting the error message. or do you get the program to start up and you get the error message when you try to open a file?

[Mica]

I converted a song in sequencer to a wav file the re-download Papagayo. It seems to have worked. I now have to figure out how to convert to lor. Lol back to video tutorials. 

[Mica]

14 hours ago, Box on Rails said:

Does the Papagayo  program start up or is that where you are getting the error message. or do you get the program to start up and you get the error message when you try to open a file?

Sometimes it starts but no face images, only mouth shapes?

[dibblejr]

On 9/6/2023 at 6:17 AM, Box on Rails said:

Are you trying to load .mp3 files? I ask because if you load an mp3 file it will not work. Papagayo  only works with .wav files. I also use only portions of the full song .wav file that contain only the lyrics sections. There is no need to load sections that only have music and no lyrics.  learning Papagayo does take some practice. If it will help, I have a small collection of completed songs that I could share. These sequences have only the faces sequenced. I could include all the related .wav files I used to create the sequence including the sequence file. This way you have something to load into Papayago that is completed and learn how it all works. PM me if interested and I'll let you what songs I have to share. 

Kenny Jure

When did pgo start only loading wav files? The short time I used it I only used MP3’s.

I have no wav files in any of my computers.

JR

[Box on Rails]

11 hours ago, dibblejr said:

When did pgo start only loading wav files? The short time I used it I only used MP3’s.

I have no wav files in any of my computers.

JR

Maybe I'm using an older version but, it is the newest version on BobO's page. I'll have to look into this. 

[dibblejr]

2 hours ago, Box on Rails said:

Maybe I'm using an older version but, it is the newest version on BobO's page. I'll have to look into this. 

Mine was way back in 2014. LOL I havent touched pgo since Jan Dec 2016. Been doing it manually since.

Reason I ask, you cant set the parameters like bit rate and all of that in .wav and in order to keep the audio in sync you must set them or the singers will be all out of sync in no time.

Edited September 14, 2023 by dibblejr

[Box on Rails]

On 9/14/2023 at 9:00 AM, dibblejr said:

Mine was way back in 2014. LOL I havent touched pgo since Jan Dec 2016. Been doing it manually since.

Reason I ask, you cant set the parameters like bit rate and all of that in .wav and in order to keep the audio in sync you must set them or the singers will be all out of sync in no time.

I have never had an issue with syncing due to Bit rate with any .wav file. As long as I set the FPS to 25 in the Papagayo editor, the sync is perfect no matter what the bit rate or how long the audio file is. In Papagayo, the default FPS is 24. If you don't set it to 25 before you start, the singing will go out of sync as you describe no matter what form of audio file or bit rate used. I most often convert my mp3 files to a wav file for Papayago editing, then cut up the wav file into short clips of just the singing parts. then create the .pgo files and export the .dat files to convert to a clipboard file. Then when the Papagayo process is done, I use the original mp3 for the sequence and paste in all the singing parts.  It works every time as long as the FPS is set to 25 in the Papagayo editor. The only time I ever had an issue, and maybe this was your issue too. It ended up not being in Papagayo but in the sequence editor. This would happen in S4 and when using a mp3 that used a VBR. When this occurred I convert the VBR to a CBR mp3s in my audio editor, Sound Forge. after the file contained a CBR, It didn't matter what Bit rate I converted it to as long as it was a CBR at 25fps. Then everything worked as intended.

Now that all my singing elements are smart RGB, I can use all the pixels within the prop with ME Rows to create more realistic animation.  Papagayo has helped me create this realism and it's fast. This has been my experience. Since going all smart I now use 10 different mouth positions on all my singing props as well as animation picture that I use on my Matrix. These 10 positions make my animated props look much smoother then using the standard 5 mouth position set up. 

I'm betting your Bit rate issue from the past was with VBR mp3s. I believe all .wav files are CBR. that might be why I have never had an issue since the program will no longer load mp3 files. Just my thoughts. 

Kenny

[dibblejr]

On 9/16/2023 at 6:46 AM, Box on Rails said:

I have never had an issue with syncing due to Bit rate with any .wav file. As long as I set the FPS to 25 in the Papagayo editor, the sync is perfect no matter what the bit rate or how long the audio file is. In Papagayo, the default FPS is 24. If you don't set it to 25 before you start, the singing will go out of sync as you describe no matter what form of audio file or bit rate used. I most often convert my mp3 files to a wav file for Papayago editing, then cut up the wav file into short clips of just the singing parts. then create the .pgo files and export the .dat files to convert to a clipboard file. Then when the Papagayo process is done, I use the original mp3 for the sequence and paste in all the singing parts.  It works every time as long as the FPS is set to 25 in the Papagayo editor. The only time I ever had an issue, and maybe this was your issue too. It ended up not being in Papagayo but in the sequence editor. This would happen in S4 and when using a mp3 that used a VBR. When this occurred I convert the VBR to a CBR mp3s in my audio editor, Sound Forge. after the file contained a CBR, It didn't matter what Bit rate I converted it to as long as it was a CBR at 25fps. Then everything worked as intended.

Now that all my singing elements are smart RGB, I can use all the pixels within the prop with ME Rows to create more realistic animation.  Papagayo has helped me create this realism and it's fast. This has been my experience. Since going all smart I now use 10 different mouth positions on all my singing props as well as animation picture that I use on my Matrix. These 10 positions make my animated props look much smoother then using the standard 5 mouth position set up. 

I'm betting your Bit rate issue from the past was with VBR mp3s. I believe all .wav files are CBR. that might be why I have never had an issue since the program will no longer load mp3 files. Just my thoughts. 

Kenny

Personally I never had the bit rate issue since no non edited MP3's get on my sequencing laptops. However I did create the issue for video and my singing face classes. Nothing will ever compare to manually sequencing faces, well until AI takes over, which is being worked on by some folks I know. As far as speed and accuracy, I can and have done 5 sequences in one day manually.

JR