Russian localization weird dialogue speed up\slow down

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SigilFey

It seems to me you don't quite understand the issue people are talking about here. It's actually more than mere lip-sync and honestely, issues with it are to be expected in pretty much any game today, sadly. The real culprit here is that Russian voice-over was "adjusted" to English lip-sync in an "unconventional" manner. There is an established technique for this kind of "dubbing" that's widely used in movies as you can't edit actors' lip movement there. So you just have to alter your translation accordingly to fit in with the existing lip-sync and look/sound natural with that foreign speech or rather lips, although that obviously results in a kind of "loose" translation.

I guess CDPR didn't want to sacrifice their Russian translation to this ""looseness" and just wanted to deliver as accurate a translation as possible, because it's an RPG and these shades of meanings and different flavors here and there do matter. Now's the fun part, there solution was to play around with the time it takes for Russian actors to say their lines. So it's like this: this is at 1.25x speed, this at 0,90x, that's at 1.1x and it just jumps back and forth like that in most dialogues. This really sounds like a broken record, unfortunately.

On the bright side, the problem affects the main game only and all the DLCs, even small ones, are devoid of this weird thing.
 
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Unfortunately, at this point it does not seem likely that this problem would be fixed, it would require a substantial amount of work, while as far as I know, active development of the game has been finished a few months ago and CDPR now focus on other projects like GWENT and Cyberpunk 2077. Remastering the dialogues is something that could be expected in an enhanced edition (not planned apparently), rather than a simple patch.

By the way, the game actually has a quite advanced system for lip sync and facial animations, you can read more about it in this GDC 2016 presentation (PDF). It does support adapting the animations to the voice acting, perhaps the Russian dialogue for the main game just could not be polished enough before the release date.
 
iCake;n7849150 said:
SigilFey

It seems to me you don't quite understand the issue people are talking about here. It's actually more than mere lip-sync and honestely, issues with it are to be expected in pretty much any game today, sadly. The real culprit here is that Russian voice-over was "adjusted" to English lip-sync in an "unconventional" manner. There is an established technique for this kind of "dubbing" that's widely used in movies as you can't edit actors' lip movement there. So you just have to alter your translation accordingly to fit in with the existing lip-sync and look/sound natural with that foreign speech or rather lips, although that obviously results in a kind of "loose" translation.

I guess CDPR didn't want to sacrifice their Russian translation to this ""looseness" and just wanted to deliver as accurate a translation as possible, because it's an RPG and these shades of meanings and different flavors here and there do matter. Now's the fun part, there solution was to play around with the time it takes for Russian actors to say their lines. So it's like this: this is at 1.25x speed, this at 0,90x, that's at 1.1x and it just jumps back and forth like that in most dialogues. This really sounds like a broken record, unfortunately.

On the bright side, the problem affects the main game only and all the DLCs, even small ones, are devoid of this weird thing.

That's not what I was envisioning at all, actually. Thanks for the added explanation. I'm not really sure why such would be the case, as lip-sync software in modern games is capable of building animations based around the phonetic sounds of the sound-files, then saving those animations / sound files as data packages. It's possible, of course, for there to be errors, but I'm not sure why a studio would simply "dub" the voice for one language onto the lip-sync data for another. It would be quite weird to take all the time to record the actors and insert the audio for the language into every single scene, then say, "Meh...skip the lip-sync," which would be mostly automatic.

If that is what's happening, then I'd be surprised. I would think it's more along the lines of reference data for certain voice / animation packages being incorrect, so the Russian audio plays while the game is mistakenly playing the English lip-sync animations (thus speeding up / slowing down the sound file as needed to sync with the incorrect animation). Is what you say something that you (or someone) actually dug into (like for modding purposes)? I'm not familiar with how the file structure works for this. I'm hypothesizing, even if you're not. :p

Unfortunately, I do think the "broken record" comment may actually hold a lot of water. I would strongly recommend anyone suffering with this simply play the game in another language. (I actually played through TW1 twice in Polish. No issues...I simply could not cope with the English voice acting. The quality of the Polish actors was faaar superior, even if I had no idea what the words were. Huzzah, subtitles!)
 
Based on some rather frustrating -- unrelated -- technical difficulties I had a while back, I can state that the lip-syncing animation system is bound to the localised voice-overs. At least this is the case for English and German. If the audio files (in my particular case, German) are missing, or unrecognised by the engine, the language-specific syncing system does not activate, and only the subtitles will display. This doesn't explain the issue people have reported in Russian, but I see little reason why the animation generator would function differently just for this language. However, it seems somewhat unlikely that the REDs used another language's lip-syncing here.
 
SigilFey , twain

This issue was reported in many Russian reviews of the game, before the actual release even. A few most popular Russian game streamers talked about this even earlier than that, one of which and who I'm mostly inclined to believe claimed that this was a conscious choice by the devs to minimize expenses on the game, not having to hire/pay someone to alter durations of the cutscenes to specific language needs. As I read up on this more it looks like this specific adapt to the voice over lip-sync was designed specifically for that and the problem is actually timing here. Say it takes 10 seconds for something to be said in the original before the camera changes angles or someone else has to start speaking, but all that takes 12 seconds in Russian, then the system will make sure the Russian lines will take 10 seconds and that sounds awful, unfortunately. But speeding up is not even the worst part, when it has to slow down is when you really feel the pain. Russian Ciri especially suffers from that, as it seems almost all of her lines are slowed down and she sounds like she's utterly stupid. Triss is at the other extreme, she sounds like she needs to become a rapper asap.
 
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iCake;n7877520 said:
As I read up on this more it looks like this specific adapt to the voice over lip-sync was designed specifically for that and the problem is actually timing here. Say it takes 10 seconds for something to be said in the original before the camera changes angles or someone else has to start speaking, but all that takes 12 seconds in Russian, then the system will make sure the Russian lines will take 10 seconds and that sounds awful, unfortunately.
Hmmm. Looking at some of the Russian cut-scenes again, I suppose this could be the case. It sounds like the audio had to be adjusted slightly, and thus the lip-syncing system can't quite match the pace in places. Based on what I know of the Team, it looks like the REDs really tried to do the best they could within the limitations they had, and I can imagine this probably still bothers many of them. While I sympathise with everyone's complaints, if fixing this would mean reworking every cut-scene individually, realistically, I don't think we can expect to see any change. That would be really rather a lot of work, and would require that they divert staff from Gwent and Cyberpunk back to Witcher III, which probably doesn't fit their production schedule.
 
Riven-Twain;n7881120 said:
Hmmm. Looking at some of the Russian cut-scenes again, I suppose this could be the case. It sounds like the audio had to be adjusted slightly, and thus the lip-syncing system can't quite match the pace in places. Based on what I know of the Team, it looks like the REDs really tried to do the best they could within the limitations they had, and I can imagine this probably still bothers many of them. While I sympathise with everyone's complaints, if fixing this would mean reworking every cut-scene individually, realistically, I don't think we can expect to see any change. That would be really rather a lot of work, and would require that they divert staff from Gwent and Cyberpunk back to Witcher III, which probably doesn't fit their production schedule.

Oh, poor things, fixing the product they have already sold would take too much time and effort, so they will rather focus on new products to sell.

Somehow, I don't have any sympathy for them here. At all.
 
I recently finished 150+ full walkthrough in Russian and didn't had any real problem or complaints, actually russian version is somewhat more alive and humorous than english, I really liked it.
Yes there are parts where voice was hastened for better lipsync, but this is very small percentage of dialogues and it is clear that a lot of work was done by localization team to minimize this problem.
 
Martinvls;n8148500 said:
I recently finished 150+ full walkthrough in Russian and didn't had any real problem or complaints, actually russian version is somewhat more alive and humorous than english, I really liked it.
Yes there are parts where voice was hastened for better lipsync, but this is very small percentage of dialogues and it is clear that a lot of work was done by localization team to minimize this problem.
Around forty to fifty percent of all the dialogue in the base game is like that, either sped up or slowed down. I didn't see how they tried to minimize it in any way, shape or form.
 
Martinvls;n8148500 said:
I recently finished 150+ full walkthrough in Russian and didn't had any real problem or complaints, actually russian version is somewhat more alive and humorous than english, I really liked it. Yes there are parts where voice was hastened for better lipsync, but this is very small percentage of dialogues and it is clear that a lot of work was done by localization team to minimize this problem.
TrueRT;n8149900 said:
Around forty to fifty percent of all the dialogue in the base game is like that, either sped up or slowed down. I didn't see how they tried to minimize it in any way, shape or form.

This is what is still unclear to me. If different players are seeing different results, that means that whatever the actual issue is may be lessened or even eliminated by people's hardware or configurations. Can both of you list your specs side-by-side?

1.) CPU
2.) Motherboard
3.) RAM (amount and speed)
4.) HDD / SSD (make and model)
5.) GPU (brand, model, and driver version)
6.) Sound Card
7.) Windows Version
8.) Where you purchased TW3 (Steam, GOG, or Origin)
 
SigilFey;n8153840 said:
This is what is still unclear to me. If different players are seeing different results, that means that whatever the actual issue is may be lessened or even eliminated by people's hardware or configurations. Can both of you list your specs side-by-side?

1.) CPU
2.) Motherboard
3.) RAM (amount and speed)
4.) HDD / SSD (make and model)
5.) GPU (brand, model, and driver version)
6.) Sound Card
7.) Windows Version
8.) Where you purchased TW3 (Steam, GOG, or Origin)

I played on "high" settings with ultra for textures and details and was forced to set medium for shadows, otherwise fps start to drop noticeably.

1) Intel i5-6400 2.7
2) Gigabyte GA-B150M-D2V LGA1151
3) Kingston DDR4 16 Gb PC4-17000
4) Game on HDD Seagate ST1000DM003 / OS on SSD Kingston SKC400S37
5) Gigabyte GV-N1060G1 (GTX1060 6 Gb) driver 21.21.13.7653
6) About sound I'm not sure because it goes to tv on hdmi, so I don't know if motherboard sound device (realtek) is used at all. Anyway I don't have any special soundcard.
7) Windows 10 Home
8) GOG, GOTY version
 
Martinvls;n8157390 said:
About sound I'm not sure because it goes to tv on hdmi, so I don't know if motherboard sound device (realtek) is used at all. Anyway I don't have any special soundcard.

It's still using Realtek -- just outputting through your TV like it would through speakers. I'm not really convinced the sound card is the root of the issue, anyhoo.

Waiting on a couple more spec lists...then we'll see if we can find any matches...
 
This is not about different ppl having different results, it's actually about some ppl not caring about this problem too much and doesn't pay attention. I have a few friends who goes like "meh, me no care bout no lypsinc problem", even thou they have them.
As for the specs:
1) Intel i7 4770k 3.50
2) Asus z87-plus
3) Corsair DDR3 16 PC3-10700
4) Game on kingston skc300s37a/120g OS on SSD kingston skc300s37a/60g
5) Gigabyte GeForce GTX980 4096 GDDR5 ram ( always lates version of drivers)
6) Build in motherboard
7) Windows 8.1
8) Steam Goty version. Ofc was playing since release, so everyversion up to 1.15. Then i took a break to replay after both DLC released and then at goty.
 
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I confirm everything said by the previous poster.

1) AMD FX 8320 3.5
2) ASUS M5A97 LE R2.0
3) Kingston HyperX Fury Red DDR3 16GB 1600 Mhz
4) Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB HDD
5) Radeon RX 480 4GB
6) Built-in
7) Win7
8) GOG-activated retail version, non-GOTY. Later switch to GOG GOTY didn't help.
 
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Well, I can already tell that it's certainly not a hardware thing. Thanks for that, though. Having read back through the thread, it seems that whatever it is in within the game somewhere.

Larus.149;n8385760 said:
This is not about different ppl having different results, it's actually about some ppl not caring about this problem too much and doesn't pay attention. I have a few friends who goes like "meh, me no care bout no lypsinc problem", even thou they have them.

I don't know exactly how the lip-sync works, but it's possible that it was simply an engine limitation that could not be worked around. Also, I've listened to the clips multiple times in a row, but not speaking Russian myself -- I'm unable to even detect it. It was recently announced here that there are no further updates planned for TW3. For what it's worth, I'm sorry for the users that are experiencing this.

If it's any consolation, I played the entire TW1 through twice in Polish with English subs. Not because there was a bug, but because I simply could not tolerate the English voice acting. (It was painful at times.) By comparison, the Polish sounded much more natural...even if I couldn't understand it. I still remember how to say, "Thank you." That's it. I suck at learning languages. Happily, the English acting in TW3 is excellent. Give that a whirl, perhaps.

In conclusion, unless someone can dig into the data files and manage to discover the root of the issue, I don't think there's anything more to be done.
 
Well, my biggest problem with this situation is lack of any sort of reaction from devs\mods on release or in the next 2 years. That is actually heartbreaking.
 
I sympathize, but the reality of any sort of artistic endeavor is that, while never really done, it does eventually have to end. I wish that I had endless piles of money and limitless time every time I direct a performance. But no...I have maybe 3 months, largely student or community cast and crew, and can't afford to completely finish painting the set because we have no more funds at that point. We need to re-do the lighting for certain scenes instead. Even if audiences love it and we make a massive profit, I'm left rankled by the things we couldn't "get right".

But then the theatre goes dark; everyone moves on. :( Those stupid, unlit patches will now bug me every time I see them in the videos. No going back, though.
 
What bugs me the most is that they had enough money to hire actors and do an amazing work on the localization. The text part and voices are great. Yet, all these money and effort, all the actors' work, it's all flushed down the toilet due to someone's f*** up with the timings. Sure it's possible to manually rework all the cutscenes and fix the broken product that was sold to people, but why. It has already been sold, why care anymore, meh.
How ironic it is to read some pre-release articles now where it states that CDPR cares greatly about localizations and believes that proper translation is the key to immersion. And here i am stuck with either broken russian version, the polish one which i honestly don't understand all that much, and very "sterile" english version with batman-like Geralt's voice.
 
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Soooo, i heard there is a PS4pro patch coming and and some stuff dor OneX. Any chance the will jam in some localization fixes? =) Pretty please.
 
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