Participant

live lip sync suddenly stopped working for many but not all characters in Starter

Forum|Forum|21 days ago
September 5, 2026
4 replies
38 views

I am using Character Animator Starter 26.0 on Windows 11. After working correctly for approximately two days, live lip sync suddenly stopped working on some of the supplied Starter puppets.

Red Dog was the puppet I had been using most and had been working correctly until the problem suddenly appeared. I subsequently discovered that several other supplied puppets are also affected, including Mark, Sebastian, Rin and Tull, while others including Lacy, Leonard, Maya, Sasquatch, Wrestler, Eyva Thorne, Bandit, Sam, Fin and Robot continue to lip-sync normally.

The microphone is working correctly. Character Animator receives and records the microphone audio normally, and the same microphone input produces live lip sync with the unaffected puppets.

The affected puppets are also capable of lip syncing correctly. If I export/record the speech and use Import Recorded Speech, their mouths animate normally. It is specifically LIVE lip sync that has stopped working.

The camera is a Canon 5D connected through Canon EOS Webcam Utility. Facial tracking continues to work: Character Animator detects my face and the green tracking lines follow my facial features, and the affected puppets respond to head, eye and other facial movements. Their mouths simply do not respond to live speech.

Additional troubleshooting performed:

• Recalibrated facial tracking — no change.
• Tested both preview and actual recording — no change.
• Uninstalled and reinstalled Character Animator — no change.
• Reset Character Animator's 26.0 roaming preferences by renaming the AppData preferences folder and allowing Character Animator to create a new one — no change.
• Tested the same supplied puppets on a second computer (laptop) using its built-in camera and microphone — ALL puppets, including Red Dog, Mark, Sebastian, Rin and Tull, live-lip-sync correctly there.

Therefore the supplied puppet assets themselves appear to be functional, and the desktop installation is receiving microphone audio correctly. The problem appears to be a failure of live lip-sync processing affecting only a subset of Starter puppets on this installation.

Because Starter mode does not expose the Lip Sync behavior or its advanced controls, I have no way to inspect or reset the live Lip Sync behavior on the affected puppets.

I would appreciate confirmation as to whether this is a known Character Animator Starter 26.0 issue and whether there is a way to reset/rebuild the live Lip Sync state without access to Character Animator Pro.

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Paul_Lowry5698Author

Participant

UPDATE: I have managed to restore live lip sync, although the behaviour remains somewhat unpredictable. The problem appears to be related to audio-device/sample-rate initialization rather than to the individual puppets. With my Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 set to 44.1 kHz, a group of puppets would not live-lip-sync even though Character Animator was receiving and recording the microphone audio and other puppets continued to work. Changing the Scarlett sample rate to 48 kHz immediately restored lip sync. Interestingly, after doing this I can now switch the Scarlett between 44.1 and 48 kHz and Character Animator follows the selected sample rate correctly, with all puppets continuing to lip-sync. Therefore 48 kHz does not appear to be a requirement; changing the sample rate seems to have forced Character Animator to reinitialize the audio/lip-sync system and cleared the problem.

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Paul_Lowry5698Author

Participant

UPDATE: SOLVED BUT NOT SOLVED!!!

I discovered what causes this behaviour. I lost the lip sync of exactly the same set of puppets on my laptop as soon as I connected a sound card. This seems deliberate since the sound quality from a laptop mic is unacceptable, the only option would be to connect a sound card and use higher quality studio microphone. The starter program automatically stops lip sync on a vast majority of puppets when you do that. The only other option is to upgrade to the pro software, but there is no upgrade to character animator pro only to the full blown CC suite. It didnt used to be like this . I used this software this way 5 years ago and it worked fine. It looks more like its an enticement to subscribe to CC Suite than serious mocap animation software. Another Adobe profit over service disappointment, if i hadn’t started with this red monster character 5 years ago and need it to continue the series, I never would have gone through all this.

NB For those in this situation the only work around I can see would be to use a lap top for mocap and lipsync and a second computer with sound card and microphone running simultaneously to capture audio.

k_oshiro

Community Expert

Hello.
It seems you are knowledgeable about troubleshooting.
If the steps you've already tried haven't resolved the issue, finding a solution will be difficult.

Another possibility is that other applications are putting a strain on memory.
That might be what's affecting the lip-sync for specific puppets.
If possible, why not try launching only Character Animator and see if that helps?
Thank you.

k_oshiro(AdobeCommunityExpert)

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Paul_Lowry5698Author

Participant

Thanks for your reply. I am running the application alone with the exception of the Canon Eos Web Cam Utility without which I wouldnt have a camera. Character Animator isnt putting any stress on processor, GPU, or RAM ( 64GB) This is a very lightweight application compared to RTX rendering software i usually run, one that I am able to run without a problem on my laptop which has considerably less memory and processing power. I’m pretty sure its a bug that something in my system has triggered. I posted here looking for a developer or someone who knows the software intimately, I think the clue is in the difference between the set of puppets that still works and those that don’t.

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