voice + video blog
New software could become Photoshop for sound
A new software called “VoCo” could become the Photoshop of audio.
The sound scientists at Adobe have created a system where you can edit recorded speech by simply retyping the words.
Systems that transcribe recorded speech into text are nothing new. Likewise converting typed text into speech has been around for years. But this is something revolutionary.
The VoCo sneak peek video from Adobe is thin on technical detail and the participants too hyped for their own good. But the concept looks like a game changer.
Editing recorded speech in the same way you might update a Word document would be amazing. Seamlessly clipping words from a speech by just hitting DELETE would be incredibly powerful.
But it‘s not just about removing words. It seems VoCo lets you add text too and the system will synthesise the new dialogue in the speaker‘s same voice. Now that‘s just spooky.
As someone who edits recorded speech on a daily basis, VoCo could provide massive productivity gains. But the text replacement options come with some concerns.
If it‘s as easy as overtyping some text to change the spoken audio, then presumably we could just as easily start putting words into other people‘s mouths? If so, the potential for abuse is large.
VoCo is one to watch. See the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3l4XLZ59iw
Posted by Tim Longhurst on Thu 10 Nov 2016.
