Lip sync: your singer, on your vocal

#What it does

A music video usually needs the artist to sing to camera. With Lip sync on, the director stages performance scenes where your song is actually sung, and each of those scenes is shot from the vocal of your own track: the mouth opens on the words, holds the long notes and closes in the breaths. Everything else in the film (the story, the places, the cut on the beat) works exactly as before. It covers soft dream pop and fast rap alike; the showcase runs from synth-pop to thrash metal.

#Turning it on

1. 1
   Leave Lip sync ticked on the Your song step

   It is on by default, first in the options row under the direction; untick it for a film where nobody should sing. This is the only place to choose: once the storyboard starts, a ticked box stays ticked and an unticked one goes away.
2. 2
   Give the singer a face

   Add the singer as a main character with a few clear photos. The director can also invent a singer, but your own face is what makes it your video.
3. 3
   Make the film at Cinematic quality

   Lip sync runs on the Cinematic engine, at any resolution. On a Fast quality the film controls say Lip sync off · Only available in Cinematic.

#Which scenes sing

• Only where the song is sung. The director gets a map of the bars that carry a vocal, and staged singing lands on them. Nobody sings over an instrumental break, and an instrumental track never lip-syncs at all.
• Only where a face can sing. A performance needs a visible face: a singer seen from behind, in a crowd at the far end of a hall, or hidden by a mask is filmed as an ordinary scene.
• Not every scene. The story still needs places, objects and moments without the singer. In the showcase films, the performance scenes are a share of the film, placed where the vocal carries it.
• Never under a camera move. The designed camera moves (a fly-through, an orbit) never run over a singing scene, so the mouth always stays readable.

#What it costs

During the launch promo, nothing extra: a lip-synced scene is priced like any other scene at the quality you chose (Plans and credits). The box says Free · launch promo while that lasts.

#On the finished film

• The label under the player says which way the take was made, for example 768p · Cinematic · Lip sync on.
• Retake video on a scene that already sings has its own small Lip sync checkbox, so a new take can keep singing or become an ordinary shot.
• A scene that could not be synced (no clear face in its frame, a refused take) is filmed as an ordinary scene instead, so the film never stops for it.
• In the chat you can ask for lip sync on or off for a scene where the rules above allow it.