Patent ID: 6097381
Filing Date: 2000-08-01
Classification: G06T,G10L

Abstract:
A method of producing a simulated facial image to accompany a unit of speech to be played, comprising:obtaining a plurality of video segments, each said video segment being a complete image of at least part of a video scene representing said part of a subject speaking a phoneme of speech;forming a database of said plurality of video segments, with each record addressed by one of said phonemes, and each record representing a video segment that corresponds to said one phoneme;identifying at least one tiepoint in each video segment representing a specific feature in said video segment and registering said at least one tiepoint to a corresponding tiepoint representing the identical specific feature in another video segment;obtaining a sample of speech;identifying phonemes in said sample of speech;obtaining video segments corresponding to at least a plurality of said phonemes in said said sample of speech;using said tiepoints to register features of the subject in said video segments; andsynthesizing images between said video segments, to produce a simulated facial image of said subject speaking said sample of speech; andequalizing background lighting between said video segments.