Cambridge Animation Systems Announces Animo Soundtrack Editor for Character Lip Synching.

Business Editors/Entertainment Writers

CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 29, 2000

Cambridge Animation Systems announces Animo Soundtrack Editor, software that accurately matches a dialogue track of an animated production with characters' specific mouth movements.

Cambridge has contracted with Dallas-based Media Sync Solutions for the rights to use its exclusive production-based voice recording analysis software, ProductionSync, as the basis for Soundtrack Editor.

"It is a great endorsement for Media Sync Solution's software that an acknowledged leader like Cambridge has chosen to work with us," says Kevin Erler, president and co-founder of Media Sync Solutions. "We are very pleased they are taking the lead in finding ways to enhance productivity for their users, and that they are using our leading-edge technologies to do so."

Animo Soundtrack Editor uses phonetic recognition technology to identify parts of speech as phonemes in a digital dialogue track. Each phoneme is identified and displayed next to the timeframe position where it occurs in the soundtrack. Timing information can be output as a "bar sheet" so that animators can accurately match the dialogue track with the specific mouth movements of the characters. Users can edit the sound breakdown to remove or add additional phonemes, and make basic adjustments to the sound file with cut-and-paste facilities.

Soundtrack Editor can be used as standalone software or in conjunction with an Animo system for 2D, 3D or model animation. When used with Cambridge's Animo 3 software, the soundtrack breakdown information can be imported into Animo's Scene Compositor, where the sound waveforms and phonemes are displayed next to the exposure sheet. The relevant drawings can then be matched to the soundtrack in the exposure sheet.

Animo 3 users can also set up libraries of drawn and painted mouth and lip positions to automatically associate a drawing with a specific phoneme. As each phoneme is identified in the soundtrack, the associated drawing is automatically selected and inserted into the scene at the correct position to match the dialogue.

Once a set of drawings, also called a level, has been scanned into Animo, the user can access a mapping panel to define the associations, then save the information as part of the level. Mapping information can also be saved independently and imported into the level. This means that if a user creates different libraries but always places the drawing for a particular sound's mouth position in the same position in the level, the same mapping can be used for multiple libraries.

"Accurate lip-synching for realistic speaking characters has always been a painstaking process," says Brian Tyler, Cambridge's vice president of sales and marketing. "With Animo Soundtrack Editor, using the ProductionSync software, it becomes faster, more intuitive and reliable. Beginning with pre-production, the Animo family of products provides powerful solutions for every stage in the digital production process."

Based in Dallas, Media Sync Solutions is a leading provider of automated audio synchronization and searching tools and software for a wide range of multimedia production applications. Using leading-edge speech processing and pattern identification technology, Media Sync Solutions provides clients with improved quality and production through the creation of synchronized multimedia content.

The Animo line of products was developed and is marketed exclusively by Cambridge Animation Systems, with headquarters in Cambridge, U.K. Animo is the world's leading 2D/3D professional animation software, with an installed base of nearly 2,000 seats in more than 50 countries. It is used for feature films, animated television series, commercials, games and multimedia development by leading studios worldwide, including Warner Bros. Feature Animation, DreamWorks SKG, Nelvana Limited, Pentafour Software, Tape House, Telemagination, Praxinos, and Colorland.

Images available upon request.