An interesting story in today's online version of my local newspaper The Chicago Tribune discusses the restoration of Roger Ebert's voice using modern technology. If you remember, Ebert of the famed Siskel & Ebert from the US television show At The Movies, has been battling cancer for several years and his latest series of operations has robbed him of the ability to speak.
Technology to the rescue in a most ingenious way: technicians were able to take DVD commentaries that Ebert had made before his cancer progressed and have created "snippets" that can now be used as Ebert types to create an audio message.
As I read the story I thought of a genealogy angle: wouldn't it be neat if we could capture sound from a video or a tape recorded interview and do the same for our grandparents or aunts and uncles? And then transcribe documents that they created such as letters, wills, etc.? Granted, you may not be able to encode the inflection or the emotion involved with such a document, but it would definitely make a "3D" version of a simple document transcription.
© 2010, copyright Thomas MacEntee
Technology to the rescue in a most ingenious way: technicians were able to take DVD commentaries that Ebert had made before his cancer progressed and have created "snippets" that can now be used as Ebert types to create an audio message.
As I read the story I thought of a genealogy angle: wouldn't it be neat if we could capture sound from a video or a tape recorded interview and do the same for our grandparents or aunts and uncles? And then transcribe documents that they created such as letters, wills, etc.? Granted, you may not be able to encode the inflection or the emotion involved with such a document, but it would definitely make a "3D" version of a simple document transcription.
© 2010, copyright Thomas MacEntee
1 comment:
Now that would be a cool use of technology!
Post a Comment