Automated Dialogue Recording

Automated Dialogue Recording is a production process involving the recording of voices in any form of media, specifically what was not recorded at the time of the original performance. This can happen in both live action and animated works. See also Subbing Versus Dubbing and Redubbing.

The process could be a new take on a line of dialogue but there is always a need for "grunts" and other little sound effects that a character might make besides dialgoue. These vocal effects are needed to be synched up with the action of the scene. Background noise and crowd scenes are also recorded and put in such necessary scenes. Especially in the case of a Celebrity Voice, those grunts may be done by someone other than the original voice. In an interesting inversion the grunts are the main extent of Jackie Chan's involvement with the actual production of Jackie Chan Adventures, while using a different voice actor to do the brunt of the vocal work.

In Western Animation, the voices are recorded first, then the animation is made to match with the performance given. This allows for a great deal more synchronization between the vocal performance and the animated performance. But even after the animation comes back, there is a clean-up process before the product is finished. By doing the voices first, it makes the overall product more expensive because of the greater care in animating it. It also makes the different language dub more noticeable because of the mouth movements being vastly different than the dubbed language.

In Anime, the animation is done before the voices are recorded, and the voice actor has to match up their performance with movements of the mouth animation. The process is exactly the same for the voice actor performing a different language dub. However, due to language translations, the time taken to convey the correct idea may vary significantly. Such adjustments are often the reasons behind Pragmatic Adaptations, Macekres and Woolseyisms. The only Anime to not do this was the classic film Akira and the results are noticeable. This process allows for a quicker animation period, and the translation into different languages is easier because there are only "mouth flaps" instead of subtle inflections. On the downside is the same thing, you lose the subtle inflections and the animation itself usually boils down to very basic facial expressions (happy, sad, enraged, joyous, distraught, neutral... and not too much in between), with the vocal performance required to carry everything else.