The virtual mediasphere is being analysed and (re)defined at a blistering pace and yet in the drive to hook in social media, standards are being to slip in traditional media organisations.
One of these ‘slips’ in the inability to provide quality subtitles for the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, something which didn’t go unmissed on the Twitter channel thanks to the campaigning work by Pesky People (@PeskyPeople #subtitlesnow).
So what’s the problem with the new digital broadcasting frequency that has been introduced in the United Kingdom?
The old analogue broadcasting system allowed for a subtitling service to be combined with the signal and delivered flawlessly to the audience, and this system was called Ceefax and was activated by using the remote control command of 888.
The old analogue broadcasting system allowed for a subtitling service to be combined with the signal and delivered flawlessly to the audience, and this system was called Ceefax and was activated by using the remote control command of 888.
Now the Ceefax system had three main characteristics:
- Not pleasant to look at
- Strangely familiar
- The same age as me
Now I don’t want to get into trouble about the politics of why providing services under the new digital network have ended or been replaced although that would be nice but more to return to the point of starting this blog post to begin with, which is...... is it possible to create a subtitling service based on current and emerging developments.
Voice to text is one of those technological achievements that hasn’t really lived up to expectations, although a successful application in the ‘real’ world would be a game changer and maybe a DIY developer team in the United Kingdom might have shown the rest of us what is possible.
Using a Pi raspberry using the Debian operating system, a few tablet devices, microphones and visual glasses to relay text to the user, the team showed that it is possible to not only convert voice to text but to translate it in real time with only a small amount of delay to allow the system to cope with the requests.
Voice to text is one of those technological achievements that hasn’t really lived up to expectations, although a successful application in the ‘real’ world would be a game changer and maybe a DIY developer team in the United Kingdom might have shown the rest of us what is possible.
Using a Pi raspberry using the Debian operating system, a few tablet devices, microphones and visual glasses to relay text to the user, the team showed that it is possible to not only convert voice to text but to translate it in real time with only a small amount of delay to allow the system to cope with the requests.
**Next blog post will be a continuation of this theoretical discussion examining in more detail this and other applications that will allow us to providing a online subtitling service.
Further reading:
Additional Online Reading:
Ceefax switch-off: Twitter pays tribute - The Guardian
Buzz about programmes - BBC
No comments:
Post a Comment