Comments on: QuickPress: “Success” of Automatic Captioning on YouTube

By: Shiyiya

Shiyiya — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:15:18 +0000

I have significant auditory processing issues too. (Interesting – the wikipedia page on auditory processing disorder mentions ear infections. I had SO MANY EAR INFECTIONS when I was little.)

I desperately want speech-to-text for my cell phone. I was trying to talk to a friend in crisis earlier and could only catch about half of what she was saying. ARGH!

And it’s been getting worse, very often I just hear speech as a jumbled collection of sounds that I can’t make any sense of. No wonder I prefer the internet!
.-= Shiyiya´s last blog ..Boycott Method =-.

By: Anna

Anna — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:54:47 +0000

I should remember to do that profile on groups lobbeying to get closed captioning done properly and have a regulatory body and stuff.

By: Tlönista

Tlönista — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:36:38 +0000

@Personal Failure: yes! I don't quite understand how it happens. Because even when I know the word "tall" (for example) is a pretty common word and will come up more in conversation, my brain insists on hearing "tog" or "Gaul" or "tarn". Extremely vexing for everyone involved! It's possibly an auditory processing thing, I think some other commenters on here have similar issues.

By: codeman38

codeman38 — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:26:22 +0000

Oh, speaking of which, this YouTube video (captions, but no audio or transcript) of closed captioning recorded off of a Cleveland news broadcast is absolutely hilarious. “My cats got weeded down again,” indeed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MzmihWo-tk

I get the feeling that this was probably done via voice recognition rather than the usual TV captioning method of using an audio typist…

By: Anna

Anna — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:43:09 +0000

They do try, yes. I think they’ll keep working on the kinks, but I don’t think a proper speech-to-text is going to come out that doesn’t involve actual audio typists.

Note to Google: I am an audio typist.

By: Personal Failure

Personal Failure — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:27:14 +0000

Tlonista: I honestly thought that was just me! My ears are just fine, but I end up having a lot of very odd conversations, i.e., You did what with a koala?

By: Samantha

Samantha — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:25:54 +0000

Still, codos to YouTube for trying!

By: codeman38

codeman38 — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 05:09:18 +0000

@Amanda: Exactly! Which is why I said what I did in the Fantasy Assistive Devices thread– a universal speech-to-text device is still decades off at best, as much as I would absolutely love to have one.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:43:35 +0000

I really doubt that will ever work because of the huge number of accents, dialects, and languages in the world, speech recognition is just not that advanced yet.

By: codeman38

codeman38 — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:27:58 +0000

@Tlönista: Heh, that’s how my auditory processing often is as well. There’ve been times when I rolled a snippet of something I heard around in my head to try to figure out which set of similar-sounding words actually made the most sense in context. And don’t even get me started on trying to decipher song lyrics…