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Frequently Asked Questions
How much does your product cost?
How is your product licensed? The Character Builder and stock characters are priced per-user. They may be installed on both a workstation and a home/laptop computer, so long as both are under the direct control of the same user. Please contact us if you require a per-seat licensing arrangement. Speech Packs are licensed per computer, and will not work on any computer other than the one they are licensed to. Licenses can be moved to a new computer. If the Builder is installed on two machines, and the Speech Packs are installed on only one of those two machines, then you will be able to do TTS voiceovers on the machine with the Speech Packs only. You can work on all other aspects of your project from either machine. The Character Server is licensed per server, and will not work on any computer other than the one it is licensed to. The license can be moved to another server upon request. There are no restrictions regarding the number of CPUs or CPU cores. (top) Do you have educational pricing?
We do not have a separate educational price, however please see volume pricing.
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Volume pricing plans are available starting at quantities of 5 and higher. Please contact
us for a quote, and indicate whether this is an enterprise, government, or educational request.
For Character Server solutions, you may qualify for VAR (Value Added Reseller)
pricing - please inquire for details.
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No. Licensed Character Builder users may distribute Flash files using stock characters on a royalty-free basis. Materials produced with the Character Server may also be distributed royalty-free, however please see the related question for a more complete discussion.The optional Speech Packs include royalty-free audio distribution rights, when distributed in a Character Builder-generated media file. Please contact us for licensing details on Character Server versions of the Speech Packs. (top) How can I purchase the Character Builder?
You can purchase the Character Builder using our
online store,
by phone at 425-831-6384, or by purchase order at 425-671-0816 (fax).
The Character Builder is also available through select resellers.
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Standard email support generally prevents us from
working with your content directly. We can also work more closely with your
team to provide hands-on assistance. An Extended Support package lets you pre-pay
for a certain number of hours that are then useable at any time.
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The Character Builder is an application that you install on your desktop. You use it to "Render to Flash", i.e. create individual Flash SWF files that you can then upload to your web server or place on a CD, for consumption by many different users. Because the Flash files contain the actual audio synchronized with a character's lips and other actions, you must determine in advance all the possible things a character might do or say. Each atomic unit of delivery is called a "presentation". A Builder-generated Flash file can contain several presentations, and the presentations can be triggered externally, or based on input from the user. You might use a presentation to greet a user, present a slide, present a bullet item on a slide, prompt the user for a multiple choice input, or respond to a user's input with "Yes, that's correct." or "No, that's not correct".
The Character Server is an optional component that you can install on your web server. With it, you can create a Flash file
"on-the-fly", taking into account variable information, such as information from a database or web-service, or even a specific
message that an end-user might have typed-in. Because of this, the Server is almost always used with a Text-to-Speech engine,
also located on the web server. You can use the Server to effectively replace any reference to a flash file located on a web
server with an equivalent reference to an ASP or PHP file that generates a Flash file on-the-fly, given the parameters that you
pass to it.
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The Character Hosting service makes it easy to create and maintain several common types of applications, or "Scenes", from any web browser. There is no software to download: simply log on, make your changes, and Publish them. While the resulting Flash files remain on the Character Hosting servers, you can link them to your own site so that they blend seamlessly with the rest of your content. The Hosting service measures how many "views", or "streams", your scenes receive. You can choose from several monthly subscription plans based on the usage level that you need. Your Hosting account enjoys access to all stock characters, the NeoSpeech Paul and Kate TTS engines, as well as Character Server functionality, such as the Respond() and Speak() API.
Why choose Character Hosting? In a sense you are leasing the output rather than purchasing the means of production. While the Hosting system doesn't have as much
flexibility as the Character Builder, it remains a simple and inexpensive option that is suitable for many users.
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The Character Builder itself is only available in English, however it will create content in any language.
The lip-sync component is language-independent, and has been tested with languages such as French, German,
Spanish, and Japanese.
High quality Text-to-Speech engines are also available for many foreign languages - please see the purchase page for samples.
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The Character Builder ships with several "stock" characters.
Additional characters and character add-ons are
available for download from our characters page. We can also work with you
to create custom characters and character add-ons in a range of styles, through our Service Desk.
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In general you can purchase stock characters for use with the Character Server in the same manner as for the Character Builder. However, because of the potential to use the Server in media-creation services, and in order to protect the interests of character authors, we require Character Server licensees to respect the "per author" nature of the character license. For example a $9 character can be used by one Character Builder user to create content that can be viewed by many end-users. However a second Character Builder user would need a second character license, since he or she is an independent author. The Character Server can be used to create an "authoring service", by which we mean a service that lets multiple users select a character, specify text or actions for that character, and then publish the resulting media product for broad consumption. Such a service would be similar to the Character Builder, that is two independent users of the character inside such a service would need two separate character licenses.
Most Character Server applications do not fall into the "authoring service" category, and for those that do, Media Semantics has been flexible in balancing the needs
of service developers with those of character artists. Please contact us to discuss the particulars of your Character Server application.
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Our stock characters share a set of standard actions, allowing them to be
easily interchanged. These standard actions include turning, pointing, looking,
hand gestures, and facial expressions. You trigger actions by inserting the appropriate
action icons into the transcript. Actions are independent
where possible. For example you can follow a Look Left action by a Gesture Left action,
and both actions will be executed simultaneously.
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Most of our Cartoon and Illustrated Head characters can be recolored directly within the Character
Builder. You may also be able to install an add-on that will alter a character's appearance.
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We have created a Character Builder Extensibility Kit specifically for developers and animators
who need to create their own characters and library objects. The kit contains tutorials and source files
that will let you create your own characters. The kit is available to existing Character Builder and
Character Server customers only. There is no charge for the kit, however we strongly recommend purchasing
an Extended Support package to help with the learning curve and ensure a successful outcome.
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No. The Character Builder renders Flash SWF files that can be read by the Adobe Flash control, which is freely available and is generally pre-installed with the browser. Adobe's own Flash authoring tool can be useful for advanced users who wish to create applications that either contain a Builder-generated Flash file, or are contained by a Builder-generated Flash file.
The Character Builder includes basic audio processing capabilities, such as noise gating, trimming, and normalization,
however a more powerful audio-processing tool may be desireable for heavy users of recorded audio. You will also want
access to Adobe Illustrator and or Photoshop, or equivalent products, to create supporting artwork.
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The Character Builder lets you record audio files "in-place" from a standard headset microphone. The Builder also lets you import audio from a recording studio. You should ensure that the source audio is high quality, specifically 44.1khz 16 bit, mono PCM .wav audio (i.e. CD format, but mono). You can use a service such as Voice123 to locate and purchase voice talent over the web.
Another option that is becoming extremely popular is the use of high-end
Text-to-Speech engines. Although broadcast-use licensing has traditionally been
difficult, we have worked with several leading vendors to provide Speech Packs, or high-quality
engines, with distribution licenses for use with the Character Builder.
Please see our online store for details.
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Generally speaking, the Character Builder works with any tool that lets you embed Flash movies. A short list of compatible tools includes Microsoft Powerpoint, Adobe Flash, Adobe Captivate (formerly RoboDemo), Adobe Authorware 7, Articulate Presenter, Lectora Publisher, and Qarbon ViewletACE. In creating Builder movies for insertion into other products, we recommend using the "Straight Flash" output option, available on the Project properties panel. While there are some limitations to the Straight Flash mode, the resulting flash movie is a simple linear sequence of frames, which will ensure maximum compatibility. Notes regarding the integration with individual tools can be found on the support page.
The Builder also allows movies from other tools to be inserted within a scene, however not all
tools have their own equivalent to "Straight Flash" for the creation of a linear list of frames.
As a result, you will not always be able to use the Start, Stop, and Goto Frame actions.
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The vast majority of PCs and Macs come with Macromedia Flash 6.0 or higher pre-installed, so
no download will be necessary in most cases.
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The Flash player is available from Macromedia, and is already present on most desktops,
with implementations for the Macintosh, Linux, and PDAs. The Character Builder normally renders SWF 6
files that run on Flash 6 through 9. The Builder can also be configured to render in Straight Flash mode
to Flash versions 4 through 9. The Flash Lite standard is used for mobile applications, and is equivalent to Flash 4.
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The optional Character Server is a COM component designed for Windows Server 2000, 2003 and Windows XP. The
Server is typically used in conjunction with Active Server Pages (ASP)
and Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) Server, but other
configurations are possible, including Apache/PHP.
We get many requests for Linux, however we do not have a Linux implementation at this time.
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Character Server features such as dynamic Flash generation and question-answering can require
considerable server-side resources. The total number of simultaneous clients that can be served by a single
Character Server depends on many factors, but the gating factor tends to be the Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine and compression. TTS
requests are normally queued up, and the actual TTS generation occurs at several times real-time. For example, going
from a text sentence to a flash stream consisting of a character speaking that sentence may
require 100 milliseconds of intense CPU activity on a commodity server. During this time the audio is generated,
compressed, and inserted into the Flash stream, along with animation frames selected from the character's animation
library. Additional requests are queued while a request is being processed, which will affect the latency, i.e. the total time between
making a request and receiving the response. In many cases the Server will improve
the overall throughput by using a cache to detect identical requests and redirect these to previously-created
Flash files.
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In general you will find our characters to be very bandwidth-efficient, however
this depends to a great extent on the style of character chosen.
We recommend a 56K or better modems for applications involving rendered characters.
Cartoon and illustrated-head characters use an efficient vector format, and leads to
great results, even on older modems.
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Yes. You can point the Flash control to any URL, including a simple file
path. You can use a number of products on the market to create standalone
shells employing the Flash control.
You can also include
your SWF within a Macromedia Director project, which is the most common platform for CD-ROM
and kiosk development.
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