I'd like to start a fandub.

[ZaichikArky]

Hey guys. I'm keeping track of this really cool fandub for FF6 found here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQYZA_zO5D4&feature=PlayList&p=477F27AC26C31A5D&index=1 . And I thought "Why not make one for Chrono Trigger?" Except one catch... I want it all in Japanese. I'd be doing it with the translation patch done by KWhazit and the group.

I really want voice actors who can pronounce things in Japanese... especially males. I'd really like it if people could help me. Though I know it'll be much harder to get people to volunteer who can speak Japanese, it's what I want to do. Does anyone want to participate? I'd really appreciate it!

~Liza

EDIT: Short example of introduction found right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-22LbRNCM&feature=channel_page

Though I haven't edited it into the clip yet, credit to the translation is due to KWHAZIT and CHRONO COMPENDIUM

Edit 2: Ok, so I'm going to start discussing which characters need voices(all of them pretty much >_>) and then list all the lines . I uploaded screen shots of the characters here - http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v326/MajesticArcanine/CT%20Project/ For this first update, I just need people who want to participate and send me lines! I will NOT be taking main characters yet. The only main character who needs a voice in this first update is Melchoir(called Bosch in this version). This encompasses talking to people in Truce village and the Millenial Fair. There are over 10 minor characters who have lines, so this should be enough for now. Please feel free to send lines for more than one character.

Edit 3: Ok, well even though I haven't given up on the Japanese idea, that is going kind of slowly right now, so I thought I'd start up an English version too. We would be using Woolsey's translation (his work of art!). So I'm bolding the characters I need right now. FOr now, it's first come, first serve. Just get your lines to me at lzakharo AT gmail.com. I prefer wav format, but if you must send something else, that's ok too. You can just pause between the lines, but if you do more than one character, please send seperate files. Don't worry about your mic sucking, I have a program that can amplify among other things : ) Thanks for the help and please don't be shy and send me the files so I can make a video!

[Crono's Mom]
   Crono...

   Crono!

   Good morning, Crono!

MOM: Come on, sleepy head!
   Get up!

MOM: Ah, Leene's Bell makes such
   beautiful music!

MOM: You were so excited about the
   Millennial Fair that you didn't sleep
   well, did you...?

   I want you to behave yourself today!



MOM: Let's get moving, now!

MOM: Finally!
   By the way, that inventor friend of
   yours...

   Uh...you know...!
   Oh, dear, I've forgotten her name!

MOM: That's right, Lucca!
   Don't forget that she invited you to
   see her new invention!

MOM: Run along now, and be back
   before dinner.

MOM: Oh, I almost forgot!
   Here's your allowance, dear!
   Have fun at the fair!
   
           

 [truce Residence, 1000 A.D.]

 [Young Woman]
   Hard to believe Guardia is now 1000
   years old, and our King is the XXXIII
   descendant to the throne!

   But how can he rule a kingdom when
   he can't even control his own
   daughter?!



  [Young Man]-
   That brat, Lucca, says she's made
   the discovery of a lifetime.


 [Young Woman]
   I'm so happy I could scream!



 [truce Inn, 1000 A.D.]

[Waitress]
   Come on in!
   Take your bloody time...!
   I'd rather serve you than go to the
   fair, anyway...


[Young Man]
   Been to the fair yet?
     
   Well get going, then!!
   You'll have to wait a thousand years
   for another Millennial Fair!


Alright, that's it for now! I hope you guys send me lines!

[Ramsus]

You might record a sample video, then provide a script or add subtitles with the romanized Japanese dialog for people to record themselves reading. Whenever people show interest, encourage them to give it a try themselves, even if they don't think they'd do the part well.

For now though, definitely post some of the Japanese dialog you want recorded and the English dialog to show its meaning. Then you can hold tryouts here and encourage people to post their attempts in either language. That way, you can gauge the size and quality of the talent pool available at the Compendium. You might also look up the actors from the Chrono Cross Audio Drama.

After you get the recordings, the important thing is that you mix the recorded voices together so they actually feel like they fit into the game and it sounds like the characters are in the same place talking to each other. If you need help with this, let me know.


Helpfulness aside, however, unless you recruit some Japanese fans to help, you'd probably have better luck finding passable or even decent English voice actors. If you can't find enough people who can pronounce Japanese and speak the lines well, try putting together a guide on how to pronounce Japanese effectively, since the vowels should be easy enough and the consonants aren't too complex. Still, there's bound to be a few gotcha's that'll throw off a lot of people (like the "r" sound used in Japanese and Korean -- took me months to start pronouncing properly), so I hope you have a good ear for catching and correcting mistakes. You might also put together some speech samples to demonstrate stress, rhythm, and intonation.

[ZaichikArky]

Ok, thanks for your recommendations, Ramsus! I was planning to get a sample up soon. The first one being the first scene with Chrono's mom and then another being the first encounter with Marle. Since I can probably really only voice female characters, I can't provide samples with male characters.

I realize that finding people who can accurately pronounce Japanese is difficult, so maybe I'm better off trying to do this for Woolsey's version, but this is a good opportunity for me to practice my Japanese.

Just to let any potential participants know, I'm not Japanese myself, even though I've been learning the language for about 8 years now. I don't expect perfect pronunciation. As long as you sound like you know some Japanese(maybe even if you don't?) I'd really like help! It's a good way to practice your Japanese skills too.

Right now I'm kind of trying to figure out how to make this work with windows movie maker and for some reason, my embedded mic doesn't record very loudly.

[mav]

Yeah, I've done a bit of narration/voice-over work for videos, and I can tell you that the easiest way around supposedly bad mics is to use a camcorder and rip the audio. And embedded mics are notoriously troublesome, since they're, well, embedded...they don't pick up sound all that well and you might have to get right up close to 'em to get any effect.

Now, I'm not all that great at pretending I know Japanese (I've heard it from random anime/video-games, but I most certainly can't speak it) but I'd love to help in any way I can.


Good luck.

[teaflower]

Indeed. I'd love to help, but I think you have the girl voices covered. Plus, the mic I borrowed from school for a project doesn't seem to like my computer. Then again, what does? I think I'll crawl behind the compie and see if I can find a working jack there.

I can do the vowels and consonants well, but again you have the girl voices, my mic hates me, and I don't really know if I'm doing it right.

[ZaichikArky]

Oh yay more help!

You see, my embedded mic doesn't seem to have trouble when used on a program like skype. In any case,  I'm going to have my dad bring me his headset so I can try using that.

I'm working on the Jina intro right now and I should have that up at some point... though it will be quiet.

And even though I do need guys more than girls(only because I can provide female characters' voices), it would kind of suck if I have to provide ALL the female characters' voices, so I do need girls to help me too! I'll put some quote(with romanji) up soon for some minor characters. Major characters like Marle and Lucca would be fine too. I don't really care who I voice.

Thanks for the interest! I'll keep everyone updated.

[Acacia Sgt]

I would like to help, if only I had a mic I could...

Wait a minute, I have my cellphone, I don't need a mic.

However, of what I know of Japanese only helps me in reading the words (not everything though, unless they are in romanji). I could still try.

[Yourgingerestfan]

Wow this sounds nice
I have a mic but can't speak Japanese :S I would love to see where this goes though,I also saw the FF6 fandub that was surprising good .
If in the end you can only find English voice actors count me in please .

[justin3009]

I have one as well but I'm not very good at Japanese and I think my mic is kinda..fuzzy.

[mav]

Why don't you try with some easy dialog from the Woolsey translation? Major scenes with the major characters--that way you can quickly decide who would voice which character. Personally, I've thought about a voice-over for CT many times over, so I'd be willing to try a whole number of voices. Take as many voice actors of each gender too--adding up the playable characters, major NPCs, other NPCs, and side characters quickly shows that there are way too many people to be voiced, unless you have a handful of people who can do multiple voices.

This has potential to be quite cool.

[Vehek]

Except one catch... I want it all in Japanese. I'd be doing it with the translation patch done by KWhazit and the group.

I'm not sure I understand what you want. Do you want to do a dub in Japanese, but with the re-translation text, or speak in English, but with a Japanese accent?

[ZaichikArky]

^ I'm sorry. Maybe I wasn't very clear?

I want to have it be entirely in Japanese. I am using SNES9x to record a play through of the retranslation of CT (the Kwhazit version). I'll have an example up soon(in a couple hours I hope) so you can see for yourself. It's taking me a while first because windows movie maker doesn't have a lot of options and also because my mic is too quiet and now I'm switching to my cellphone as Acacia Sgt suggested. That was a good idea BTW , I didn't even think of that. It is much clearer than my mic even though I can't really hook my cellphone up to my computer... I should have a different mic on Monday.

[ZaichikArky]

Ok, so I uploaded a short example, one that I'm working on right now. It's edited into my first post  in this thread. I'll finish that one up, but it's to let people know what I'm working on now. As you can probably tell, I have an accent when I speak Japanese, but I don't think my accent is very strong and I'm able to pronounce words accurately enough , so I don't expect perfection.

Also, I understand that there is more interest in doing this in English since most people can't speak Japanese, understandably, so if the Japanese thing doesn't work out, I'll try to organize an English version.

[Ramsus]

I've actually noticed a lot of problems getting the recording volume loud enough with a lot of microphones and today's integrated sound cards, especially with Windows Vista (not to mention Linux), which will no doubt complicate things. If you don't have a decent sound card, you may be better off with a cheap USB mic/headset.

For recording audio, if you want some extra flexibility, use Audacity and keep everything uncompressed. Record a few seconds of silence with each recording so you have enough background noise to use Audacity's noise removal filter and clean things up a little (which is confusing to use -- let me know if you need help), and watch the video as you record to get the length of each line right. You can also find and use audio filters for some effects.

Then export every line separately from Audacity as individual WAV files (I suggest numbering the lines in the script, so people know what's what and what to name their audio). If you have multiple lines in the same Audacity project, just select the part of the audio with the line and use Export Selection to save just the part that's selected.

Once you have all the lines, import and sync them up using your video editor.

As for people sending their audio to you, try to get them to use FLAC (a lossless audio format) if possible, so the audio isn't huge and there's no quality loss. That way the audio isn't re-encoded into five different compressed formats before it shows up on YouTube, morphing people's voices along the way.

If you want to get even better results though, you'll need more control. A multi-track video editor that let's you carefully adjust the volume levels of each audio track and provides a decent array of mixing and equalizer options would be really useful in that case. Even a relatively cheap copy of Adobe Premiere Elements (which sometimes comes with video cameras) should do the job. You might also have friends or family with some other good Adobe, Avid, or Ulead video-editing software sitting around.

If that's not an option, you can always fall back on mixing all the audio in Audacity and syncing it up in your video editor, but that involves a lot of painful back and forth.

Except one catch... I want it all in Japanese. I'd be doing it with the translation patch done by KWhazit and the group.

I'm not sure I understand what you want. Do you want to do a dub in Japanese, but with the re-translation text, or speak in English, but with a Japanese accent?

Basically, the in-game text dialog would be like the English subtitles with the voice acting done in Japanese.

[ZaichikArky]

Ok, thanks for the tips. When I get that headset that works better, I will try using it with Audacity.

So what program do you recommend most for video editing? One that is free, preferably. I'm just using windows movie maker right now. The plus side is that it's really easy to use. The down side is that it is overly simple and can't edit sound like I want it to.