Comments on: Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/ Relentless user-focus on civic websites Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:46:09 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: Etienne Pollard http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1984 Etienne Pollard Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:24:53 +0000 http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1984 Yvonne, You're right that we don't have subtitles on the video. This would be a great feature to have, but right now we don't have the resources to implement such a feature. It's possible that they have subtitles available on the live TV version of the BBC parliament output, although to be honest I don't know whether this exists. As far as I know they don't exist on the web streaming version of BBC Parliament or the official Parliamentary video archive. However, we do have the next best thing. If you're watching the video alongside the Hansard transcript on TheyWorkForYou.com, then at the start of a given person's speech the transcript of that speech is indicated with a yellow background. It's not ideal, but we think that it's a great improvement on what was previously available, especially for deaf people using the site. Yvonne,

You’re right that we don’t have subtitles on the video. This would be a great feature to have, but right now we don’t have the resources to implement such a feature.

It’s possible that they have subtitles available on the live TV version of the BBC parliament output, although to be honest I don’t know whether this exists. As far as I know they don’t exist on the web streaming version of BBC Parliament or the official Parliamentary video archive.

However, we do have the next best thing. If you’re watching the video alongside the Hansard transcript on TheyWorkForYou.com, then at the start of a given person’s speech the transcript of that speech is indicated with a yellow background. It’s not ideal, but we think that it’s a great improvement on what was previously available, especially for deaf people using the site.

]]> By: yvonne hadley-jones http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1983 yvonne hadley-jones Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:12:47 +0000 http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1983 An excellent idea but without available subtitles it is useless for deaf people who, as normal, are precluded yet again An excellent idea but without available subtitles it is useless for deaf people who, as normal, are precluded yet again

]]> By: Kia Kanpa http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1977 Kia Kanpa Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:32:02 +0000 http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1977 Just a quick question: will you add this to the getDebates/getHansard API? It would be fantastic to drop a video in after and excerpt if available. Just a quick question: will you add this to the getDebates/getHansard API? It would be fantastic to drop a video in after and excerpt if available.

]]> By: Alan Connor http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1976 Alan Connor Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:40:27 +0000 http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1976 A rhyme from an anonymous somewhere in Whitehall: <em>And so while the great ones depart to their dinner, The secretary stays, growing thinner and thinner Racking his brain to record and report What he thinks that they think that they ought to have thought.</em> A rhyme from an anonymous somewhere in Whitehall:

And so while the great ones depart to their dinner,
The secretary stays, growing thinner and thinner
Racking his brain to record and report
What he thinks that they think that they ought to have thought.

]]> By: Stephen Edwards http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1975 Stephen Edwards Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:48:19 +0000 http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1975 The art of cleaning up the speech of some of our less eloquent parliamentarians could be a useful learning process for a more advanced speech recognition process. Most speech recognition systems fail IMHO on the fact that they don't deal well with the fact that we speak quite differently to how we type. Dictating to a human doesn't present this problem. The solution could be using Hansard as a model to teach the a far more advanced dictation engine... perhaps we might one day have a speech recognition system that John Prescott could use! The art of cleaning up the speech of some of our less eloquent parliamentarians could be a useful learning process for a more advanced speech recognition process. Most speech recognition systems fail IMHO on the fact that they don’t deal well with the fact that we speak quite differently to how we type. Dictating to a human doesn’t present this problem. The solution could be using Hansard as a model to teach the a far more advanced dictation engine… perhaps we might one day have a speech recognition system that John Prescott could use!

]]> By: Tim Morley http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1974 Tim Morley Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:48:37 +0000 http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1974 Robert: that would be an imaginative and unexpected use of the data created by this crowd-sourcing project. Unfortunately, it wouldn't work at all :-( because Hansard isn't a verbatim record of what is said in debates, but a cleaned up version, with hesitation and repetition removed, some re-phrasing, etc. As a written record of debates, it's much more readable and more valuable like that, but the result is unfortunately completely useless for training a speech recognition system. Robert: that would be an imaginative and unexpected use of the data created by this crowd-sourcing project. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t work at all :-( because Hansard isn’t a verbatim record of what is said in debates, but a cleaned up version, with hesitation and repetition removed, some re-phrasing, etc.

As a written record of debates, it’s much more readable and more valuable like that, but the result is unfortunately completely useless for training a speech recognition system.

]]> By: Robert (Jamie) Munro http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1973 Robert (Jamie) Munro Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:53:26 +0000 http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/#comment-1973 Could we submit the audio of the results, along with the Hansard data to VoxForge or similar, so that it can be used for training open source speech recognition algorithms? Could we submit the audio of the results, along with the Hansard data to VoxForge or similar, so that it can be used for training open source speech recognition algorithms?

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