Author Topic: War in Heaven Voice Acting — VICTORY IS LIFE!  (Read 113312 times)

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Offline General Battuta

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Huh, good call.

 

Offline An4ximandros

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Bryne is... meh. :\

Likely because I always imagined him as being pissed during that briefing. The VA sounds very "dry". *shrugs* I think he can do a better job without "loosing composure".
And he doesn't sound in his 50s
Hides in bunker
« Last Edit: January 13, 2014, 09:15:00 pm by An4ximandros »

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Bryne is... meh. :\

Likely because I always imagined him as being pissed during that briefing. The VA sounds very "dry". *shrugs* I think he can do a better job without "loosing composure".
And he doesn't sound in his 50s
Hides in bunker

Not every actor is going to sound the way you'd imagined, unfortunately. This is an amateur outfit, working under time constraints, and we want to get the job done. Byrne conveys the heart of the role, and that's what we need.

Someone identify that new voice!


 

Offline niffiwan

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
He sounds like I imagined Sergei Gwilym to sound :)
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
That's right, citizen! The Compass That Never Veers, the Infallible Writ, the Voice of Words Unspoken, our savior Reverend MacDuff has reached down to us with his right hand! Reach up, and be elevated!

e: in the OP
« Last Edit: January 13, 2014, 09:28:04 pm by General Battuta »

 
Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Redone line(s) sent!
Previous Projects: Ancient-Shivan War | GTF Durandal

Current Projects: Exile: Into The Dark Waters (Proof-editing/misc)

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Exactly 50 roles left to cast, by my count. Chipping away at the glacier.

 
Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Only 50 left? Hot damn did they fill fast! :)
Previous Projects: Ancient-Shivan War | GTF Durandal

Current Projects: Exile: Into The Dark Waters (Proof-editing/misc)

 

Offline Crybertrance

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
OMG... Whoever voiced Sergei is freaking awesome! The voice modulation, tone, errything....perfect...simply perfect.. :yes: :yes:

Also, fwiw... I kinda agree with An4ximandros... If possible, the tone of that briefing would be much better if you could request the voice actor to be a little more agressive or 'pissed'... But only if it isnt too much trouble.
<21:08:30>   Hartzaden fires a slammer at Cybertrance
<21:09:13>   Crybertrance pops flares, but wonders how Hartzaden acquired aspect lock on a stealth fighter... :\
<21:11:58>   *** The_E joined #bp [email protected]
21:11:58   +++ ChanServ has given op to The_E
<21:12:58>   Hartzaden continues to paint crybertrance and feeding the info to a wing of gunships
<21:14:07>   Crybertrance sends emergency "IM GETING MY ASS KICKED HERE!!!!eleventy NEED HELPZZZZ" to 3rd fleet command
<21:14:50>   Hartzaden jamms the transmission.
<21:14:51>   The_E explodes the sun

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Again, not every actor is going to sound the way you'd imagined, unfortunately. This is an amateur outfit, working under time constraints, and we want to get the job done. Byrne conveys the heart of the role, and that's what we need.

 

Offline Kolgena

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
My mental image of the harry potter trio differed substantially from how the actors portrayed them. It's pretty much a given that a "text" version of a character and an acted version will be different for people.

Also remember, Byrne is a high ranking commander in an organization that's crazy about being Zen (see wat i did thur). I think it makes sense that he has to sound collected, regardless of the situation.

Besides, a high ranking official who normally holds a reasonable facade of calm while busting the balls of anyone who steps out of line is much more likely to inspire fear in someone like Simms than someone who can't keep emotions in check.

 
Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Just submitted 2 characters, Vineto and Anjaneya control.

For all you lurkers here with microphones: Gather your strength and head to http://www.goldwave.com/release.php. :)

The trial version should be more than enough. Here are some tips for at least adequate sound quality:

- Go to Windows Control Panel --> Sound --> Microphone --> Set 44100 Hz and 24 bit.
- Turn Microphone Boost ON and "Listen this device" OFF
- Set the recording volume to a sufficiently low level, lower than 30 %.
- Install Goldwave trial version
- Create a new file, with a preset of 30 seconds and MONO
- Adjust Volume control options --> enable 24 bit PCM for both input and output --> Set the mono source channel to AVERAGE (the default setting "left" is just stupid)
- Do your magic :)
- Remember to select and cut off the remaining silent part with DELETE. Now your file should be just the right length.
- Select the whole file ---> Click tab EFFECT --> Filter --> Noise Reduction --> Default preset
- Save the file with the correct name file, choose OGG, 44100 Hz, 1.0 q, 240kbps, mono

Good luck to everyone, "we can do this!" :D

 

Offline Kolgena

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Why 44.1khz? The game runs in 48khz (I think), and I thought studio mastering usually had you using whatever the hell highest sampling rate you could push (96khz seems best, higher might be artefacty) then downsampling to whatever you want to use (44.1 or 48).

24bit might need to be dithered to 16bit to keep file sizes appropriate for negligible quality loss for faster submitting. I have no doubts that final game files will be 16 bit.

Also, most people's mics suck nuts, most audio will be put through a radio filter, and FSO's sound engine isn't great, so.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2014, 05:33:56 pm by Kolgena »

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Finalized a bunch more roles today, and picked up some new talent. The BP IRC crew continues to bang out lines at an impressive rate, and we've had decent uptake from offsite advertising.

 

Offline Frak_Tastic

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Not sure, so forward them to be to be sure!

Resent!

 
Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Why 44.1khz? The game runs in 48khz (I think)

Actually I'm pretty sure that FSO runs in 44100 Hz on default. So does majority of the games anyway. All the existing BP1 voice files are 44100 Hz too. However I would prefer, that all games ran in 48000Hz, but unfortunately that is not the case.

Quote
and I thought studio mastering usually had you using whatever the hell highest sampling rate you could push (96khz seems best, higher might be artefacty) then downsampling to whatever you want to use (44.1 or 48).

I have done some meddling with sample rates in the past. Downsampling is not a nice operation, when you don't do post-processing. In my experience, recording in 44100 Hz 24 bit is a better idea than recording in 96000 Hz 16 bit, when the end result is downsampled to 44100 Hz anyway. Downsampling leaves random artifacts, especially on higher pitches. 48kHz, 96Khz and 192kHz ---> 44,1 kHz conversion is messy; 96KHz --> 48kHz conversion is more manageable, but useless if the sound engine reads @ 44100Hz.

So that's why I think 24 bit --> 16 bit conversion is more useful. Recording at 24 bit gets you a bit of extra fidelity, of which some can even transfer to 16 bit version, and there are hardly any artifacts or anomalies. Besides, recording at 44100 Hz - 24 bits doesn't grow the file size THAT much compared to 16-bit 96000 Hz or especially stereo.

EDIT: useless detail removed
« Last Edit: January 15, 2014, 06:41:49 am by Lykurgos88 »

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Frak_Tastic! His name will be spoken of with reverence in the next life! Sing with honor the name of Col. Fishguts, who was brave! Carve the face of jg18 into the monoliths of the Valley of Ten Thousand Bloodied Throats! These and others have risen to join the march.

I wish to speak words of honor to all those who have auditioned for Kassim. The mountain of corpses we have built beneath the role tells of great determination. The sea of blood spilled in Kassim's name gives testament to the bravery of these candidates.

Sing, muses, of these and more:
Adam 'Ultra_HR' Warren
Aditya Tejas
Aksel Alpay
Basil Vendryes
Bigchunk1
Clive Scerri
Darknezz
IronBeer
James Firkins (who did a splendid job, but who faces the unfortunate handicap of being Ransom Arceihn, with one of the most spectacularly recognizable voices in the community)
Josh Kay
Kael Larkin
Kevin Dawes
Michael Blakeslee
Michal Wlodarczyk
Mongoose
Nis Nis
-Norbert-
Orcinus
Peter Lewis
Sarkoth
Scotty
Sebastian Rodoni
Son of Orion
SuperCoolAl

I also suspect starwolf took a stab at the role, knowing starwolf's dedication. Look at these brave sods. Marvel at this monument to their tenacity, courage, and determination. We'll have a good Kassim.

Today has been another day of excellent progress. In quite the reverse of our AoA demographics, we need more ladies. Find and roust some ladies who may act for us.

I must rest. The effort of unzipping all these archives leaves me terribly weary. Tomorrow I will bring you voices.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Just submitted 2 characters, Vineto and Anjaneya control.

For all you lurkers here with microphones: Gather your strength and head to http://www.goldwave.com/release.php. :)

The trial version should be more than enough. Here are some tips for at least adequate sound quality:

- Go to Windows Control Panel --> Sound --> Microphone --> Set 44100 Hz and 24 bit.
- Turn Microphone Boost ON and "Listen this device" OFF
- Set the recording volume to a sufficiently low level, lower than 30 %.
- Install Goldwave trial version
- Create a new file, with a preset of 30 seconds and MONO
- Adjust Volume control options --> enable 24 bit PCM for both input and output --> Set the mono source channel to AVERAGE (the default setting "left" is just stupid)
- Do your magic :)
- Remember to select and cut off the remaining silent part with DELETE. Now your file should be just the right length.
- Select the whole file ---> Click tab EFFECT --> Filter --> Noise Reduction --> Default preset
- Save the file with the correct name file, choose OGG, 44100 Hz, 1.0 q, 240kbps, mono

Good luck to everyone, "we can do this!" :D


For those using Audacity or any other recording program, I'd like to condense the former into three main points:

1. Make sure your recording does not have clipping on it. Clipping is when the waveform signal from the microphone is so strong that it "peaks" beyond the valid area, creating "plateau"-like waveform that sounds like a demented kazooist during a Saturn V launch.

2. Make sure you're getting good enough signal-to-noise ratio on the recording. This is quite easy to do by monitoring the waveform; as long as the general thickness of the waveform while you're talking is clearly distinguishable from the "silent" level, you're good. For obvious reasons try to minimize the background noise level, too...

3. Familiarize yourself with the noise reduction utility on your recording program of choice. Audacity especially has a very powerful noise reduction tool that actually allows you to analyze your particular recordings for a noise pattern, making it more accurate at detecting which parts of your recording are noise and which ones are not. To do that, I recommend leaving some trailing or leading silence in your samples while you're recording them. After amplifying your track, you can then select a bit of the noise, open the Noise Removal tool, and click on "Get Noise Profile". The tool will close without any dialogue, but the noise profile is now stored. Now you select the track fully, click on "Noise Removal" again (or "Repeat Last Effect") and click OK. By my experience, the default settings are quite fine.

4. Submit samples preferably with lossless codec (PCM WAV or FLAC), or if you must use compression (for bandwidth or email limits), use highest-quality VBR OGG Vorbis.

...FOUR main points.


MP3 codec in particular is to be avoided at all costs. There are some technical reasons for this.

MPEG-3 codec is inherently lossy so using it places some limitations on what we can do with the submitted voice samples. Same applies to OGG but to lesser extent because:

MP3 is designed specifically for music, not for speech. In addition, voice acting samples often have at least some level of noise in them unless they're already properly treated or recorded with professional studio grade equipment... and MP3 codec considers audible noise as "signal" but doesn't really know what to do with it, and often the result is that the codec produces all kinds of strange artefacts (tingly noises, weird harmonics etc.) that can be almost impossible to remove.

OGG Vorbis is a more modern codec and better than MP3 in every possible way.


Possible suggestions for reducing noise / improving the SNR:

-make sure microphone cable doesn't run right next to some transformer - those are often notoriously bad sources of RFI that an unshielded cable will pick up like an antenna. This is a typical, common source of 50Hz "mains hum" type noise. I'm getting that too, but there's not much I can do about it...

-connect microphone directly to the sound card / motherboard's mic input on the back of the PC, instead of using the front panel connector. Sometimes, the front panel connectors can be a source of noise, be it caused by ground loops (typically causes a grinding or whining noise that varies based on things like CPU load), or RFI from the devices inside the computer (such as graphics card). Even if the sound card itself were shielded against such interference, the front audio panel wirings are typically a weak point in computer case design.
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 
Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Kassim? Nah, I never auditioned for him. Captain Genady though, he I did take a stab at :p
« Last Edit: January 16, 2014, 01:36:47 am by starwolf1991 »
Previous Projects: Ancient-Shivan War | GTF Durandal

Current Projects: Exile: Into The Dark Waters (Proof-editing/misc)

 

Offline Hobbie

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Re: War in Heaven Voice Acting Death March
Today has been another day of excellent progress. In quite the reverse of our AoA demographics, we need more ladies. Find and roust some ladies who may act for us.

I know a woman who would make the perfect Karen Ng'Mei. I've directed her to the script. I'm also stretching out to my female American friends to see who else I can find.
In the arena of logic, I fight unarmed.