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Monday, July 07, 2008

Time Out of Joint

Fixing lipsync for humans… and others

Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster was a guest on the Colbert Report about a week ago, talking about balanced diets. (A fake monster on a fake commentary show that spun off a fake news show… come to think on it, Cookie performed through a window that was directly above Colbert’s fake fireplace, where the chimney normally would be.)

As much as I enjoyed the interview, I was also aware of a total disconnect between the puppet’s mouth movements and its voice. The Muppet performers are usually more careful about those things. Granted they’ve got a lot to take care of, and it’s got to be doubly hard in an ad lib interview on a grown-up show.

But I’m sensitive to this, primarily because a few years ago I mixed some promos for Sesame Street where “beak sync” was critical. The ad agency had made minor changes in Big Bird’s dialog, and his voice didn’t fit his mouth at all any more. We had to very carefully nudge the syllables back to where they presumably belonged. You can see the spot at dplay.com/movies/sesame.html. And yes, that’s Don LaFontaine - “Mr Movie Trailer” - as the voiceover.

It’s actually easier to align errant sync on humans than on puppets, because our lips make specific movements for each consonant. The /p/ and /b/ sound are particularly helpful… find one of those on the screen, go to the first frame where the lips are actually closed, find the silence in the track that’s right in the middle of that consonant, line the two up, and chances are you’re back in sync! (Two other tricks for verifying sync: Bump the track, a quarter frame at time, while it’s playing against picture. If it looks worse, bump in the other direction. And - if your software permits it - play the scene in sync but at half speed.)

But I’m afraid this kind of sync tweaking might become a lost art. Not because of sloppiness on the production side; we’ve got wonderful tools for fixing sync these days. But because the media just aren’t sync-friendly any more. Some popular DV cameras have notorious picture latency. You can fix that in post, but by the time a show makes its way through satellite, local cable, and a settop DVR, there can be a frame or two additional error. Then it hits the DSP and scanning delay in the user’s big screen TV…

Maybe, when things settle down after the digital broadcasting transition, this will get standardized and predictable. For now, it’s a puzzle. Do you fix sync in post, so that the show looks perfect when it leaves your studio? Or do you fudge it a little, knowing that picture is more likely to be delayed than sound by the time it gets to the viewer, and also knowing that “sound early” is a cardinal sin. (We can often forgive a track that’s a little late against picture, particularly if there’s some distance on the screen, because in the real world sound travels more slowly than light. But sound never arrives ahead of images in the real world.)

For me, I’ll choose the former, and take pride in releasing tracks that are in sync… at least, where non-puppet voices are concerned. Besides, it’s too complicated to explain this all to clients.

Audio •

(Page 1 of 1 pages for this article )

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