Automatic captioning now available from YouTube -- congressional implications?

[Daniel Schuman]

Google has unveiled a new tool that would allow videos to be automatically captioned. It would listen to the text and automatically transcribe the contents using the same technology it uses for Google voice. (Which works decently, but not perfectly.)

Would auto-captioning of videos work for Congress too? Some implications: sync video to text and bookmark, search video for specific phrases, make freely available instant transcripts of committee hearings, compare the congressional record  against what Google thinks has been said....

Google to Add Captions, Improving YouTube Videos

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/technology/internet/20google.html?_r=1&hpw

Google unveiled new technologies on Thursday that will automatically bring text captions to many videos on the site.

The technology will also open YouTube videos to a wider foreign market and make them more searchable, which will make it easier for Google to profit from them.

While the technology can insert captions only on English-language speech, Google is giving users the choice of using its automatic translation system to read the captions in 51 languages.

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But Mr. Harrenstien said a vast majority of clips on YouTube did not have captions and the new Google technology would generate them automatically. YouTube is initially applying the captioning technology only to a few channels, most of them specializing in educational content. They include channels from universities like Stanford, Yale, Duke, Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PBS and National Geographic, and Google itself — its corporate videos will be captioned. The company plans to gradually expand the number of channels that work with the automatic captioning technology.

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Google also introduced a related service to give anyone who uploads a video to YouTube the option of uploading as well a text file of the words spoken in the video. Google will turn the text file into captions, automatically matching the spoken words with the files.

The technology, which Google calls “auto-timing,” will make it easy for anyone to add captions to their videos. It will be available to YouTube users worldwide, and Google said it would be particularly useful for videographers who shoot from a script, since they already have a file of the text spoken in the video.

Daniel Schuman
Policy Counsel | Sunlight Foundation
Twitter: danielschuman | 202-713-5795