Hi
I was just watching Click (BBC News 24 et al) and they were showing a
'Microsoft future' system that downloaded video (from video podcasts, they
said) and ran a voice recognition process on the audio which converted the
output to text.
The point of this was to allow video content to be searched by entering
keywords into a Media Center screen, so you could have automatic 'search
folders' that listed new content that contained the search keywords.
And this got me wondering why they had gone to the trouble. Almost all
output on the BBC in the UK, and most US network programming provides
subtitles. In the UK they are delivered by teletext (Ceefax or Teletext) on
page 888, or via a special feed in the DVB-T, DVB-CS and DVB-S system. In
the US they used 'closed captions' (CC) or via a digital stream in the ATSC
system.
Some BBC programs provide their scripts online, but I was wondering if it
would be possible to provide ALL the subtitles used by the BBC (and other
broadcasters) over the course of the day as RSS feeds?
Long, long ago I had a BBC Micro program that could record the transmitted
subtitles, so it's not difficult to do.
This would make it very simple to find and watch for keywords used in
programs. When - eventually - the iPlayer launches there could be links to
the actual program content too!
Brian Butterworth
www.ukfree.tv
PS: I accidentally made a Google gadget...
http://www.google.com/ig/add?synd=open
<http://www.google.com/ig/add?synd=open&source=ggyp&moduleurl=http://www.ukf
ree.tv/txlist_gadget.xml>
&source=ggyp&moduleurl=http://www.ukfree.tv/txlist_gadget.xml
or Google desktop version, click add and enter
http://www.ukfree.tv/txlist_gadget.xml and click 'search gadgets'
