System and method for triphone-based unit selection for visual speech synthesis
First Claim
1. A method of generating a video sequence having mouth movements synchronized with speech sounds, the method utilizing a database of n-phones as a smallest selectable unit, where n is larger than 1, the method comprising:
- calculating a target cost for each candidate n-phone for a target sequence using a phonetic distance, coarticulation parameter, and speech rate;
for each target frame in the target sequence, searching for candidate n-phones that are phonetically and/or visually similar according to the target cost;
sampling each candidate n-phone to get a same number of candidate phone frames as in the target sequence;
building a video frame lattice of candidate video frames based on the candidate n-phones;
assigning a joint cost to each pair of adjacent video frames; and
constructing the video sequence according to a Viterbi search on the video frame lattice by finding the optimal path through the lattice according to the minimum of the sum of the target cost and the joint cost over the sequence.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A system and method for generating a video sequence having mouth movements synchronized with speech sounds are disclosed. The system utilizes a database of n-phones as the smallest selectable unit, wherein n is larger than 1 and preferably 3. The system calculates a target cost for each candidate n-phone for a target frame using a phonetic distance, coarticulation parameter, and speech rate. For each n-phone in a target sequence, the system searches for candidate n-phones that are visually similar according to the target cost. The system samples each candidate n-phone to get a same number of frames as in the target sequence and builds a video frame lattice of candidate video frames. The system assigns a joint cost to each pair of adjacent frames and searches the video frame lattice to construct the video sequence by finding the optimal path through the lattice according to the minimum of the sum of the target cost and the joint cost over the sequence.
43 Citations
28 Claims
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1. A method of generating a video sequence having mouth movements synchronized with speech sounds, the method utilizing a database of n-phones as a smallest selectable unit, where n is larger than 1, the method comprising:
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calculating a target cost for each candidate n-phone for a target sequence using a phonetic distance, coarticulation parameter, and speech rate; for each target frame in the target sequence, searching for candidate n-phones that are phonetically and/or visually similar according to the target cost; sampling each candidate n-phone to get a same number of candidate phone frames as in the target sequence; building a video frame lattice of candidate video frames based on the candidate n-phones; assigning a joint cost to each pair of adjacent video frames; and constructing the video sequence according to a Viterbi search on the video frame lattice by finding the optimal path through the lattice according to the minimum of the sum of the target cost and the joint cost over the sequence. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
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9. A method of generating a video sequence having mouth movements synchronized with speech sounds, the method utilizing a database of n-phones as a smallest selectable unit, where n is larger than 1, the method comprising:
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searching the database of n-phones for a plurality of candidate n-phones for each target frame of a target sequence; building a video frame lattice of candidate video frames according to the candidate n-phones; and searching the video frame lattice using a Viterbi search to construct the video sequence by finding the optimal path through the lattice according to the minimum of the sum of the target cost and the joint cost over the sequence.
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10. A system for generating a video sequence having mouth movements synchronized with speech sounds, the system utilizing a database of n-phones as a smallest selectable unit, where n is larger than 1, the system comprising:
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(l) a unit selection module that performs the steps of; (a) calculating a target cost for each candidate n-phone for a target frame in a target sequence using a phonetic distance, coarticulation parameter, and speech rate; (b) for each n-phone in the target sequence, searching for candidate n-phones that are visually and/or phonetically similar according to the target costs; (c) sampling each candidate n-phone to get a same number of frames as in the target sequence; (d) building a video frame lattice of candidate video frames; and (e) assigning a joint cost to each pair of adjacent candidate video frames; and (2) a search module that performs the step of; (a) searching the video frame lattice to construct the video sequence by finding the optimal path through the lattice according to the minimum of the sum of the target cost and the joint cost over the sequence. - View Dependent Claims (11)
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12. An apparatus for generating a video sequence having mouth movements synchronized with speech sounds, the system utilizing a database of n-phones as a smallest selectable unit, where n is larger than 1, the apparatus being controlled by a program implementing a series of steps comprising:
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calculating a target cost for each candidate n-phone for a target sequence using a phonetic distance, coarticulation parameter, and speech rate; for each target frame in the target sequence, searching for candidate n-phones that are visually and/or phonetically similar according to the target cost; sampling each candidate n-phone to get a same number of candidate frames as in the target sequence; building a video frame lattice of candidate video frames; assigning a joint cost to each pair of adjacent video frames; and constructing the video sequence using a Viterbi search on the video frame lattice by finding the optimal path through the lattice according to the minimum of the sum of the target cost and the joint cost over the sequence. - View Dependent Claims (13)
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14. A computer-readable medium storing a program for controlling a computer device to perform a set of steps for generating a video sequence having mouth movements synchronized with speech sounds, the method utilizing a database of n-phones as a smallest selectable unit, where n is larger than 1, the set of steps comprising:
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calculating a target cost for each candidate n-phone for a target sequence using a phonetic distance, coarticulation parameter, and speech rate; for each target frame in the target sequence, searching for candidate n-phones that are phonetically and/or visually similar according to the target cost; sampling each candidate n-phone to get a same number of candidate frames as in the target sequence; building a video frame lattice of candidate video frames; assigning a joint cost to each pair of adjacent video frames; and generating the video sequence using a Viterbi search on the video frame lattice by finding the optimal path through the lattice according to the minimum of the sum of the target cost and the joint cost over the sequence. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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21. A method of generating a video sequence having mouth movements synchronized with speech sounds, the method comprising:
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receiving data associated with speech generated from text; calculating a target cost for each candidate n-phone for a target sequence; for each target frame in the target sequence, searching for candidate n-phones that are phonetically and/or visually similar according to the target cost in a database where the n-phones are the smallest selectable unit; building a video frame lattice of candidate video frames; and constructing the video sequence according to a Viterbi search on the video frame lattice by finding the optimal path through the video frame lattice according to the minimum of the sum of the target cost and a joint cost over the sequence. - View Dependent Claims (22, 23, 24, 25)
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26. A virtual agent that interacts in real time with a user, the virtual agent being controlled according to a method of generating a video sequence utilizing a database of n-phones as a smallest selectable unit, where n is larger than 1, the method comprising:
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calculating a target cost for each candidate n-phone for a target sequence using a phonetic distance, coarticulation parameter, and speech rate; for each target frame in the target sequence, searching for candidate n-phones that are phonetically and/or visually similar according to the target cost; sampling each candidate n-phone to get a same number of candidate frames as in the target sequence; building a video frame lattice of candidate video frames; assigning joint cost to each pair of adjacent video frames; and generating movements for the virtual agent by constructing video sequences according to a Viterbi search on the video frame lattice by finding the optimal path through the lattice according to the minimum of the sum of the target cost and the joint cost over the sequence. - View Dependent Claims (27)
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28. A method of generating a video sequence having mouth movements synchronized with speech sounds the method utilizing a database of n-phones as a smallest selectable unit where n is larger than 1, the method comprising:
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receiving text-to-speech data; selecting a plurality of n-phones from the database of n-phones; building a video frame lattice of candidate video frames based on the selected plurality of n-phones, wherein each candidate video frame is indexed to an n-phone in the database of n-phones; and constructing the video sequence from the video frame lattice using a Viterbi search on the video frame lattice by finding the optimal path through the lattice according to the minimum of the sum of a target cost and a joint cost over the video sequence.
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Specification