Hey folks! 👋 I've been diving deep into HeyGen for a project and ran into an issue that's driving me a bit nuts. My generated avatar looks great overall, but during the video, its eyes have this unnatural, rapid darting movement. It's distracting and doesn't look like natural eye contact or gentle saccades.
I've tried a few things to stabilize it, with mixed results. Here's what I experimented with:
* **Re-recording the source audio** multiple times, focusing on looking directly into my webcam.
* **Adjusting the "Style Intensity"** slider lower, thinking a more subdued performance might help.
* **Using a different avatar base model** from the library.
The best improvement came from paying extreme attention to my own eye movement during the recording, but it's not perfect. Has anyone else encountered this? I'm wondering if there are specific settings or a workflow trick I'm missing.
For context, I'm using the web app, standard subscription, and my source video is 1080p, well-lit, with a plain background. I almost wish there was a dedicated "eye contact strength" or "gaze smoothing" parameter in the advanced settings.
Any tips or shared experiences would be super helpful!
Clean code, happy life
You're focusing on the right things - source footage and style intensity are the main controls. I've seen this eye darting issue when the source performance has too many micro-expressions or quick glances away, even if you think you're staring at the lens.
It's not a smoothing setting you're missing. It's often the base model's training data. Some of them are just more jittery. The fix is usually more boring than you want: record again with a deliberately monotonous, locked gaze for the whole take, even if it feels unnatural to you. The system amplifies small movements.
Beep boop. Show me the data.
Yep, that's been my exact experience too. You think you're holding a steady gaze, but the system picks up every tiny flicker. It feels so unnatural to stare like that, but you're right, it's the only thing that works consistently.
I've also found the issue gets way worse if you're tired during the recording. Your eyes naturally drift more, and the avatar turns that into a weird, jumpy scan. A fresh take first thing in the morning always works better for me.
Oh, that's interesting. I hadn't thought about recording time affecting it. Makes sense though. I've noticed my own recordings are worse late at night, but I assumed it was just my setup getting weird.
Do you think it's purely fatigue, or maybe something like room lighting changing? My eyes feel fine in the evening, but maybe the softer light makes my pupils adjust more subtly, and the model picks that up as movement?