Altering facial displays in cinematic works
DCFirst Claim
1. A method of altering a cinematic work by substituting a second animated facial display for a first animated facial display and in which the displays have lip movements corresponding to the languages used and wherein the languages of the two displays are sufficiently different to result in different lip movements for each display, comprising:
- generating data in digital form representing the configuration of the second facial display over a plurality of cinematic frames, generating data in digital form representing the configuration of the first facial display over a plurality of cinematic frames of said work, and altering under the control of both sets of said data and a programmed digital computer the configuration of said first facial display to produce substantially the configuration of the second facial display.
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Abstract
The invention relates to substituting for an original sound track of a motion picture a new sound track in a different language while at the same time correcting the lip movements of actors in the film to correspond to the new language. The method makes use of selected equipment, such as a digital video image processor, a video display, a programmed digital computer, and selected data on a frame-by-frame basis as to mouth location, mouth shape, mouth movements, etc. of the actor on the film and the frame-by-frame photographed mouth area of the new actor supplying the new language sound. The computer cooperates with the image processor to effect the alteration in the lip shapes by varying the intensities of the video pixels in the facial area on the film in accordance with the data and the program in the computer, whereby the new sound track with correct lip movements may be substituted for the original sound track.
25 Citations
17 Claims
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1. A method of altering a cinematic work by substituting a second animated facial display for a first animated facial display and in which the displays have lip movements corresponding to the languages used and wherein the languages of the two displays are sufficiently different to result in different lip movements for each display, comprising:
- generating data in digital form representing the configuration of the second facial display over a plurality of cinematic frames, generating data in digital form representing the configuration of the first facial display over a plurality of cinematic frames of said work, and altering under the control of both sets of said data and a programmed digital computer the configuration of said first facial display to produce substantially the configuration of the second facial display.
- View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
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8. A method of substituting a second language and associated lip movements for a first language and associated lip movements which are in a cinematic work made up of a number of frames and wherein the two languages have different lip movements, comprising:
- generating data in digital form representing the lip movements of the respective languages, transmitting said data to a programmed digital computer, and under control of said computer, and in accordance with said data, modifying the light intensities at selected areas of the frames to alter the lip movements of the first language to a configuration substantially corresponding to the lip movements of said second language.
- View Dependent Claims (9, 10)
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11. In a method of substituting second language lip movements for first language lip movements in a multi-frame cinematic work containing the first language lip movements and wherein the two languages result in different lip movements, the steps including:
- generating digital data representing said first and second language lip movements, generating data including information as to the location of spaced points representing points on a lip shape of a frame of at least one of said languages, transmitting all of said foregoing data to a programmed computer, and under control of said computer ascertaining the configuration of said lip shape as a curve through said points by use of cubic spline interpolation.
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12. In a method of altering a cinematic work by substituting a second animated facial display for a first animated facial display and in which the displays have facial movements including lip movements corresponding to respective languages used in the work and wherein the languages of the two displays are sufficiently different to result in different facial movements including the lip movements for each display, the steps comprising:
- generating data representing the configuration of the first and second facial displays, storing the data in a programmed computer and in a video image processor in a form that includes numerical representation of the intensities of a number of video pixels in a cinematic frame, and altering under the control of the programmed computer and in conjunction with the image processor the intensities of at least some of the pixels so that the frame contains substantially the second facial display in place of the first display.
- View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
Specification