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Spoken Word Search in Video Editing Applications
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Thanks for the input. I agree that a very good transcript, time-aligned accurately and complete, is an ideal scenario. Today’s automated transcription technology is very mature, and given the tools I’ve tested, as well as actual experiences documented on this and other forums, the quality of automated transcripts isnt likely to improve anytime soon.
I’m looking at it from a different angle — although I have limited experience using video editing and production tools, with a large number of examples I’ve seen, *some form of text-based artifacts exist if not transcripts — shooting scripts, rundowns, teleprompter text, CC — that approximate some portion of what is spoken.
In your experience, what % of the content being edited has or had some form of dialogue in text form?
Our Sync technology is robust in that text can be chopped up, spelled incorrectly, a superset or subset of the audio – and relevant words will still be lined up with the dialogue.
Another question is around what you’d actually like to do with the the time-aligned transctipt once it’s produced? I’d ultimately like to see the text included as a native part of any encoded video, enabling jump-to navigation and browsing within a video from any search box (i.e., iTunes, web portals, other content distribution points, allowing the actual audio to be included as another searchable metadata element.
Assuming no text existed that was of high enough quality to be included with the video, I envision including the audio index that Nexidia creates – alternatively included as a native part of an encoded video. The result would be identical to the scenario above -fully searchable audio with higher accuracy and potentially more coverage than a poor transcript.
Another idea thrown out on this forum is to manually transcribe only select sentences/lines in a video and have Sync find those relevant portions to be used as chapter markers in the video. Same scenario exists – any text that can sync’ed should be natively integrated into the video.
What are your thoughts on other uses of the time-aligned text during and after the editing process?
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[Kip Watters] “Another idea thrown out on this forum is to manually transcribe only select sentences/lines in a video and have Sync find those relevant portions to be used as chapter markers in the video. Same scenario exists – any text that can sync’ed should be natively integrated into the video. “
Kip,
This is in fact very similar to the way I do things now when I am not given transcripts. It’s not a bad direction to go in, but still not the ideal.
As you said in your opening, “a very good transcript, time-aligned accurately and complete, is an ideal scenario.” There simply is still nothing better, and any of the alternatives are a compromise that ultimately probably save neither time nor money.
For me, the two most important reasons a complete transcript are imperative are the following:
1) When dealing with voluminous interviews, anything less than the ideal of a complete transcript is often too difficult to follow.
2) Vetting edited material for legal reasons can only be accomplished by comparing to the context of the complete transcript.
Nonetheless Kip, I still support what your company is proposing. It still sounds like it could be a great addition to FCP.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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Just wanted to chime in that I would be very interested in this software as well. Avid’s Script Sync is a big reason I’m probably going to pick up a copy of Avid MC.
-Andrew
3.2GHz 8-core, FCP 6.0.4, 10.5.5
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (6.8.1) -
YES PLEASE!…. i work on a lot of documentary TV shows… I have the luxury of having transcribers who use software called Pilotware to make nice transcriptions with TC ins at the start of paragraphs, and for the past year or so i have been literally copying and pasting the paragraphs from the transcript into FCP’s marker comment box… its actually very nice to use markers as a way of jumping from paragraph to paragraph in the sequence and see in a nutshell & quickly what is being said… and of course it is roughly searchable, you can search for a word or phrase and it will take you to that marker… but it won’t highlight the word or anything, and it won’t take you to that exact spot in the sequence, you still have to do a little searching…
unfortunately i just yesterday noticed that for some reason FCP 7 now has a limit on the number of characters that will display in the canvas… after pasting a paragraph into the co0mment box, only about half of it displays in the canvas, unlike FCP 6 where it would all display.
There is something nice about being able to see a whole paragraph in a box, as opposed to a “subtitle” type thing, where you’d have to play it out or scroll to see the whole phrase.
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I work on oral histories and use the new, beta, free download, Adobe Story to transcribe my interviews. I then use Adobe Premiere Pro to attach the script to the video as meta data. Then I export the video to Adobe Encore and output it as an Adobe Flash Video that is fully searchable, just like a text doc.
8mm & 16mm film to DVD
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Hello Kip.
Just ran across your post and am wondering if you can help direct me. I am president of a public access community TV station in Wayland, MA. We upload most of our recorded programs to a web server, in addition to broadcasting on the local cable stations.We’ve been looking for a way to search these uploaded videos for particular words or phrases. They typically are local governmental meetings. I ran across your article on “spoken-word search” from about 18 months ago.
Is there any direction you can give me towards finding an application that we can utilize?
Many thanks,
Ken Isaacson
President, WayCAM
https://www.waycam.tv -
Ken,
GET from AV3 Software ($249) became the working product that Kip alluded to, using technology from Nexidia. If you use Final Cut Pro GET will do the job for you. Avid also has a similar add-on called Phrasefind ($500) to it’s latest version of Media Composer, which also uses Nexidia technology. Hope this answers your question.
BTYW, here’s a link to my Creative Cow review of GET: https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/get-review/1
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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David:
Thanks so much for taking the time to help me out. GET looks like a great product. I’ll look into it further.Ken
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