Storyblender, the casual animation site that launched at TechCrunch40 that lets you put together customized goofy video clips, has just opened up a fun new side project called Make Me Talk. The new web app lets you stick some fake lips on the photo of your choosing and make them move realistically in sync with a voice recording.
To use the service, just upload a photo (upclose headshots work best), and choose from a handful of lip designs. Once you’ve resized and placed the lips, you’re asked to make your recording of up to 60 seconds. The audio detection seems to work pretty well (you can see a demo video below), though I wish there was more variety in lip choices. Even without much variety, it’s still a lot of fun.
Other services that offer similar talking avatars include Beema (covered here), Vidiator, and Oddacast’s Voki.
Note: If you’re having trouble getting the lips to sync correctly, try closing any other tabs in your browser that might be playing a Flash video (this bug should be fixed by early next week).
Nice. I will have to play around with this site later.
Me too. Looks silly and fun.
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Thank you, thank you! I’ll be here all week…
When i saw this kind of sites, i just want to jump from the window.
Just thinking about how much money they spent on this make me sick and i feel i’m gonna have a heart attack…
Haha… hyperbolic negativity will get you everywhere, Michel!
We’re fortunate to have a great core technology on which we can build cool video apps – from the goofy&simple to the useful&sophisticated – with minimal add-on dev work.
Cheers to Jason and TC for the writeup, and thanks guys for the comments so far – we’ll be sure to keep an eye on this for feedback and suggestions!
Mark B
Storyblender bd/product/marketing
Yeah i understand, i’m really a “technology” enthousiastic. And as i work a lot with video, i really look forward experiences of other company.
Blend studio is a really nice product and i can imagine the work of your guys on it, and i’m really impress by it.
But MakeMeTalk, even if it could be funny, i don’t see why a company like yours, with a such powerful technology, waste time on this?
(Don’t take it personal, i’m like that. >_< )
Michel no worries, not taken personally at all – I’m a bit of a hyperbole enthusiast myself, so I can’t help but admire the visual image of someone getting sick, having a heart attack, and then jumping from a window, all in one go… well done!
Without getting into the many reasons why something like MMT makes sense for us, consider just one: it serves as a very easy-to-understand example of what sorts of things we can do with Blend Studio. Which helps us in our discussions with potential partners/clients about future things we’ll be able to build off of that.
I’ll leave it at that for now… cheers Michel!
I actually really liked this interview mainly because I’m a Dr. Dre and Eminem fan. Stereotypically speaking, most rap artists don’t have a lot of knowledge in tech so I think you asked the right questions. Kept it simple, relevant, and interesting.
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Have you seen http://www.cardfish.com , they render videos and also phonecall the person as well. Would be neat to have that and the animated mouth option.
Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase.
[KJV]
Your beginnings will seem humble, so prosperous will your future be.
[NIV]
Though your beginning was insignificant, Yet your end will increase greatly. [NASV]
I checked the site and this app looks like just the tip of the iceberg of the tech. I wonder what kind of killer usages could be done with it… but it sure looks like a great block between media generation (with digital cameras, camcorders, mobiles and all that is on the web) and distribution (YouTube & al.).
Kinda microproduction tool.
The “remake tree” keeping track of changes and edits is like a Social Photoshop Cache for collaborative editing, even allowing branching of different versions.
Looking forward to see what comes out of this!
It’s just fun.
Soo — which of these sites takes mp3 files? I don’t see the use of this. I have recording of people. I have picture sof people. I’d like to put them together, but this thing wants me to use the microphone.
If I had the people here to use the microphone, I’d just video them!
Let me use the recordings of people I have on my harddrive! durrr.
Hey Clint – hmmm, mp3 input is doable… it could be interesting if the usage case makes sense… can you (or anyone else) tell me about a specific usage scenario you have in mind? Would you have mp3s of a friend, and a picture of that friend, and then combine? Or something else?
Gotta try to figure out if this could be something a lot of people would want…
In semi-related news, after the Blagojevich thing broke and the news outlets were all showing transcripts of the relevant conversation, Rachel Maddow essentially did a Make Me Talk on her show with a photo of Blago and a simple yammering mouth on there seemingly operated in real time by some intern pressing a binary open/close mouth button.
RACHEL IF YOU’RE READING THIS WE HAVE A SOLUTION YOU CAN LEVERAGE FOR NEXT TIME.
thanks for the feedback and idea Clint!
M
The site’s still a bit shakey. You can’t edit or delete the “make me talk” blends via links on the website once created; which is in contradiction to their ToS.
You can hack deletes though:
1) Extract the number from the v= parameter in the url (for instance 672161552200901134234234)
2) Paste the following into your browser address bar: http://www.stor..._post.asp?code=
3) Paste the id you copied in step (1) onto the end of the URL (in this example, to get: http://www.stor...200901134234234)
4) Press send, and you should see a page with the word “success” on it.
And to edit your account, click on your username on the “Your Blends” home page.
Wow, that is a pretty impressive hack!
We’ve added the ability to edit/delete videos. You can also now check a box to keep your video hidden from the public areas of our site.
Mark at storyblender