Audio Guidelines

SGX generates animation based upon the audio files you provide. Making sure that your audio adheres to the guidelines below is critical for creating high-quality animation with SGX.

SGX supports a wide variety of PCM-based audio formats at a number of sample rates and bit depths.

Supported file formats

• wav

• mp3

• ogg

• aiff

• au

Supported sample types

• Mono audio only.  Stereo recordings are not supported and will not be processed. 

• Minimum 16bit depth

• Minimum 16Khz sample rate

Audio production best practices

When you provide SGX with high-quality audio input it will generate better animation output.  Below are some best practices for producing audio for use with SGX.

• Minimize background noise - A clean, isolated voice will produce the best results.  Even low-level ambient sounds and background music can potentially affect the quality of the animation. 

• Use raw, unprocessed voice - Reverb and other audio effects can negatively impact animation quality.

• Use uncompressed audio - Compression reduces the amount of information available in the audio for SGX to use, which could impact output quality.

• Avoid recording in echoic spaces - Like reverb post-effects, audible echoes from the recording venue can diminish the quality of the resulting animation.

• Single speaker - SGX is designed to only animate one speaker for a given audio file. 

• Padding - If the audio file is cut very close to the beginning or end of the audible speech, the animation might then start or end with the face in an active state, since there will be no time for a transition into or out of the speech.  To avoid this consider padding the beginning and end of the clip with a bit of silence; alternatively use the Pre-Roll and Post-Roll options in SGX.