Acoustic and Visual Analysis of Expressive Speech: A Case Study of French Acted Speech

Slim Ouni (1) , Vincent Colotte (1) , Sara Dahmani (1) , Soumaya Azzi (2)

1 MULTISPEECH - Speech Modeling for Facilitating Oral-Based Communication
2 Polytech'Clermont-Ferrand

Within the framework of developing an expressive audiovisual speech synthesis, an acoustic and visual analysis of expressive acted speech is proposed in this paper. Our purpose is to identify the main characteristics of audiovisual expressions that need to be integrated during synthesis to provide believable emotions to the virtual 3D talking head. We conducted a case study of a semi-professional actor who uttered a set of sentences for 6 different emotions in addition to neutral speech. We have recorded concurrently audio and motion capture data. The acoustic and the visual data have been analyzed. The main finding is that although some expressions are not well identified, some expressions were well characterized and tied in both acoustic and visual space.

Keywords: expressive audiovisual speech; acted speech; Facial expressions

Domains: Other [q-bio.OT]

Slim Ouni, Vincent Colotte, Sara Dahmani, Soumaya Azzi. Acoustic and Visual Analysis of Expressive Speech: A Case Study of French Acted Speech. Interspeech 2016, ISCA, Nov 2016, San Francisco, United States. pp.580 - 584, ⟨10.21437/Interspeech.2016-730⟩. ⟨hal-01398528⟩