Lip Sync in After Effects

Angie Taylor posted Lip Sync in After Effects, teaching a task that most animators will be asked to do at some point in their career. The technique in this video (from Adobe After Effects CS5: Learn by Video) automates the process and uses only built-in features of After Effects CS5 (AE 10.0.1). Tutorial files and a text-based version of the tutorial (from AE 5.5) are available if you want to follow along with older versions.

But wait there’s more…

Here’s some recent lip sync video tutorials for After Effects; they’re very similar in using time remapping, basic expressions or converting audio to keyframes, etc. instead of Reshape, CC Split, or other effects:

• Lip Sync in After Effects by Angie Taylor
• Lip-Syncing in After Effects by Aharon Rabinowitz
• After Effects Lip Sync Tutorial by Rob Moffett
• Using Time Remapping for Lip-sync by Robert Powers (embedded below & more from Todd Kopriva)
• Lip-Synch with Twixtor from ReVisionFX
• lipsyncing with papagayo (and After Effects) in text by Ianian7
• Pucker Up With A “Rocky Horror” Lips Rig by Ran Ben Avraham on AEtuts+
• Advanced 2D Cartoon Lip Sync Animation by Dave Scotland on AEtuts+ AE Premium
• And of course animation similar to JibJab also features lip syncing — see Create the JibJab Effect by Adam Everett Miller on AEtuts+ and Make the JibJab Effect using After Effects and the Tracker by Greyscale Gorilla. By the way, JibJab posts behind-the-scenes videos and background including the use of AE in their productions; see for example Putting it All Together and their Behind the Scenes of the 2010 Year in Review collection.

If you’re trying to sync up audio recorded separately, Premiere has an Audio Units mode for its Timeline that allows for easy fine-tuning. Back to AE, here’s Robert Powers on lip sync: