Audio Splicing?

[N0VA]

I'm posting this here cause I wanna use this for SFM and idk what to google to get the answers I'm looking for.

Basically I want to make a series using SFM, but I lack voice actors. Decent ones anyway. I'm wondering if theres a way/program to like splice the audio?

I mean like, you have Team Fortress for example, they have pleanty of voice lines for each character but obviously you can't tell a story with them, at least not clearly. I wanna do something like the offical valve works kinda, with fresh lines and stuff but I was planning to remix the old lines. So like, sorry if this is confusing and I don't really know how to put this but like could I say take one of scout's lines, and slice and dice it up in a sound program to get the indivisual sounds of his voice for his pronouncation of letters and somehow make a decent or at least understandable new voice line from the sounds of the other ones that I have collected? Y'know like string them together in such a way it forms new words he hasn't said before?

yeah so is this possible and or a good idea? would it be too hard? Do you guys even understand what I'm asking about...?

[Anomi]

Hmm, It's possible. A similar idea goes into text to speech, but you're gonna need good audio experience and lots of assets to accomplish something like that.

Some Youtube Poop creators back in the day would splice up syllables and vowel sounds to construct sensences, but it's a very time consuming process.

I do think it's possible, but it'll be so much more time consuming than original voice actors.

[Staples McGee]

Originally posted by Magicphobic:

I'm posting this here cause I wanna use this for SFM and idk what to google to get the answers I'm looking for.

Basically I want to make a series using SFM, but I lack voice actors. Decent ones anyway. I'm wondering if theres a way/program to like splice the audio?

I mean like, you have Team Fortress for example, they have pleanty of voice lines for each character but obviously you can't tell a story with them, at least not clearly. I wanna do something like the offical valve works kinda, with fresh lines and stuff but I was planning to remix the old lines. So like, sorry if this is confusing and I don't really know how to put this but like could I say take one of scout's lines, and slice and dice it up in a sound program to get the indivisual sounds of his voice for his pronouncation of letters and somehow make a decent or at least understandable new voice line from the sounds of the other ones that I have collected? Y'know like string them together in such a way it forms new words he hasn't said before?

yeah so is this possible and or a good idea? would it be too hard? Do you guys even understand what I'm asking about...?

If you're asking for a program to splice audio, I suggest Audacity. it's free and (in my experience) not too hard to use, but you may need to look up some tutorials to get started. I'll warn you, though, because of how the original voice actors accented their words depending on the mood/context of the sentence, splicing dialogue usually comes out sounding rather odd. And, as Sieskeleton said, it'll be very time consuming.

[R234]

People have been doing TF2 voice splicing since forever now. It's not too difficult to do, but it sounds horrible.

[Pte Jack]

I DO no THat, audio Spl eye sing is pos see a bull...

but it can sound like a GPS system gone mad.

Audacity is probably the best inexpensive tool to use to do it, but you'll have to listen to hundreds of line, pick the individual words you want your character to say, cut them out of the original wav and then splice them into a new wav file. Timing and emphasis is paramount when doing this if you don't want your character to sound like "Susie" telling that a U-Turn is needed to get you to a destination.

Make a "LEFT" turn now!!!

[Zappy]

I didn't bother reading all the walls of text here, but you can use the B button in Source FilmMaker's clip editor to blade clips (split them at the cursor), and that includes sound clips. Then you can delete either what is in front of or behind where you bladed the sound, and then add another bladed sound afterwards. It takes time, and sounds a bit bad, and Audacity and such is recommended, but I almost always splice audio within Source Filmmaker.

[N0VA]

Alright so it's possible and yeah I'm aware they will sound kinda robotic due to the voice tones and changes depending on the moods but like wouldn't I be able to fix that somehow like if they raise their voice on a word couldn't I just lower it?

[Zappy]

Source Filmmaker only allows sound-editing in the forms of changing sound volume and changing speed (with 50% speed also having 50% pitch and so on).

[Pte Jack]

Now you're talking $$$ for audio editing software like Melodyne. But even that has it's limits. Think of a tape recorder and wanting to change the tone and mood of something you said when you were really excited to something said when you were sad. Can't be done, pitch, tone, tempo, yadda, yadda are totally out of whack... and you want to take words and phrases out of something like that and change them to sound natural??? Nope, that can't be done unless you know someone in "THE" Agency....

[Zappy]

Originally posted by Pte Jack:

Now you're talking $$$ for audio editing software like Melodyne.

Actually Audacity is acceptably good at changing just pitch or tempo without changing the other, and Audacity is free. But only very few Garry's Modders/Source Filmmakers go that far with audio-splicing.

[N0VA]

Originally posted by Vintage:

Originally posted by Pte Jack:

Now you're talking $$$ for audio editing software like Melodyne.

Actually AudaCity is acceptably good at changing just pitch or tempo without changing the other, and AudaCity is free. But only very few Garry's Modders/Source FilmMakers go that far with audio-splicing.

Iiiiiii'm willing to take it that far.

[-[Harry]/=\Leethanx6tence']

This disgussion is from 2014 or before, and the conversation is probably over, but I recommend Audacity and Levelator. Audacity for mixing lines. And Levelator to make it sound nice.

[EmperorFaiz.wav]

This is acceptable kind of necro. Levelator... that’s new to me. I’ll look into it.