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When i set up a scene with Michael 3 or Victoria 4 in Talk Designer the mouth moves fine, but i am not getting much movement in the eyes and the characters both don't blink at all when i play the animation back once lip syncing is applied.

Did you select a viseme map appropriate for Michael or Victoria?  The handful included with Poser 7 aren't configured for either figure.

Shaders Cafe (a.k.a. NomiGraphics) sells a Talk Designer expansion pack which adds support for over 200 figures, including Michael 3 and Victoria 4.  You can find it here in the Marketplace, or at Content Paradise: http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=53126

http://www.contentparadise.com/us/user/talk_designer_expansion_kit_for_poser_7_product_25231

One of Talk Designer's limitations (as far as I can tell) is that it isn't quite as flexible as Mimic.  Most functions (including blinking) can only be tied to a single channel.  Michael 3 has Blink Left and Blink Right morphs, but no Blink Both dial, so Talk Designer couldn't be made to blink both eyes simultaneously, even with a viseme map set up for his morphs.  Unless, of course, such a dial were added to the figure.

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I downloaded free phonemes for v4 are there any better phonemes out there?

DAZ added its own phonemes when they updated Victoria to 4.1.  In my opinion, they're about the same as mine.  I've produced good results with both.

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I also have noticed that the emotion bars do not seem to be doing anything, could this also be to do with the phonemes or something i am doing wrong? 

 

Talk Designer uses an assortment of face files to control the emotion morphs.  These face files are listed in each viseme map.  Since the names of the emotion morphs might vary from figure to figure, custom face files are often required.

Unfortunately, the Talk Designer expansion doesn't provide these yet.