DIGIT: A Digital Foley System to Generate Footstep Sounds

Abstract

We present DIGItal sTeps (DIGIT), a system for assisting in the creation of footstep sounds in a post-production foley context—a practice that recreates all diegetic sounds for a moving image. The novelty behind DIGIT is the use of the acoustic (haptic) response of a gesture on a tangible interface as means for navigating and retrieving similar matches from a large database of annotated footstep sounds. While capturing the tactile expressiveness of the traditional sound foley practice in the exploration of physical objects, DIGIT streamlines the workflow of the audio post production environment for film or games by reducing its costly and time-consuming requirements.