LipSync MX

CATEGORIES: Product Reviews, Software | Cyndy Cashman | March 10, 2007

Making your animations talk has never been easier

lipsyncmx LipSync MX v2.0.3 is one of those rare programs that makes you want to call your friends and say, “You’ve got to try this!” Designed for creating “…high-quality lip-sync animations for Flash,” LipSync MX lives up to its claim. The program is based on the association of phonemes (the smallest distinguishable unit of speech) with corresponding visemes (mouth positions). Even though the program can recognize 40 different phonemes, it’s impractical to include 40 different mouth positions in an animation. Instead, LipSync splits phonemes into nine families and corresponding visemes; for example, the mouth position is the same for the letters M, B, and P; F and V; etc. The male and female default visemes sets included with the program are easy to modify to fit your characters, or you can create your own from scratch.
For such a powerful program, the interface is amazingly simple. The Quick Actions located on the left side of the screen contains four buttons that walk you through the four steps used to create a SWF file. The SWF file, which is exported, contains a frame-by-frame animation of the character talking. To use the animation, you import the SWF file and the audio file into your Flash document and set the Sync to Stream. I tested a 40-second audio clip containing a number of technical terms. I was amazed at the synchronization quality. In the past, I have looked at other products, but found them too time-consuming or complex. Or, they required hosting on their servers. In contrast, LipSync MX is easy to use; affordable; performs amazingly fast synchronization; and, maybe just as important, is fun to use. Now, if they’d just make a Macintosh version.—Cyndy Cashman