Audio-visual selection process for the synthesis of photo-realistic talking-head animations
US6654018B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Mar 29, 2001 |
| Grant date | Nov 25, 2003 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Nov 26, 2021 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG10L2021/105
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A system and method for generating photo-realistic talking-head animation from a text input utilizes an audio-visual unit selection process. The lip-synchronization is obtained by optimally selecting and concatenating variable-length video units of the mouth area. The unit selection process utilizes the acoustic data to determine the target costs for the candidate images and utilizes the visual data to determine the concatenation costs. The image database is prepared in a hierarchical fashion, including high-level features (such as a full 3D modeling of the head, geometric size and position of elements) and pixel-based, low-level features (such as a PCA-based metric for labeling the various feature bitmaps).
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.