I'm not sure what you would call this effect but I'm trying to place a recorded track of a person saying something over the mouth of a person (still photo). I use Final Cut HD 3.5. Thanks for any assistance.

Er... I'll go with animation or even photomation (but that's not a real word!).

Whatever we call it there's a couple of different routes you can go depending on what you want to achieve.

If it's a South Park/Monty Python type of animation you're after then you can create separate layers for the mouth/chin in Photoshop and then animate them in FCP using the wireframe and key frames, obviously you'll have to create a background layer as well.

I'm sure there's some good animators on this board who can give you better advice though.

I would say it depends on the vibe you're going for, but you could do it like SNL. Record yourself (or somebody's mouth) lip syncing the audio file, then using a feathered mask of sorts just place the recorded mouth, over the mouth of the photo. With a little bit of color correction you can match the skin tone and vuala!

Again, might not fit what you're going for, but that's just one way to do it.

:-D

Thanks guys. Tim, that's exactly what I'm looking to do. The skin tones don't even have to match, I just want to be able to do the effect in FC Expresss HD 3.5. My problem is I don't know the first step in blending the video with the still photo.