6 Replies Latest reply: Dec 20, 2010 5:01 PM by Todd_Kopriva RSS

    Premiere Pro Speech-to-Text Transcription Demostration

    Dave Dugdale Community Member

      I finally got around to trying the speech to text feature in Premiere and I thought I would share my experience with you guys.

       

      To follow the test better

      watch this video in a larger format.

       

       

      Am I doing something wrong because it didn't work to well?

        • 1. Re: Premiere Pro Speech-to-Text Transcription Demostration
          JSS1138 CommunityMVP

          You're not alone in your observations here, Dave.  Speech to Text still seems more of a gimmick than a genuinely useful "feature".

          • 2. Re: Premiere Pro Speech-to-Text Transcription Demostration
            Eric Addison MeganK

            I just used it on a project, and it worked pretty well. I had clean audio from XDCAM EX interview footage, audio from some WMV files. and audio from a Quicktime DV file. I'd guess it got about 70% right...maybe a little less. Not sure what I did to get better results...not that this should matter, but where did you do the transcription - AME or Soundbooth? I did it in Soundbooth...

             

            Funny thing is, the speech to text on my Droid X phone is very, very good...I use it for text messages all the time and I very rarely have to make corrections.

            • 3. Re: Premiere Pro Speech-to-Text Transcription Demostration
              Dave Dugdale Community Member

              I did it within Premiere which I think took me to AME.

              • 4. Re: Premiere Pro Speech-to-Text Transcription Demostration
                Eric Addison MeganK

                I wonder if using Soundbooth yields better results? I can't see how it would - I think they use the same technology. Might be time to run a test....

                • 5. Re: Premiere Pro Speech-to-Text Transcription Demostration
                  jabloomf1230 Community Member

                  That sums up my experience also. Unfortunately, it's a good idea, but it's not Dragon Dictate. Here's some thoughts, based on my experience:

                   

                  1. It will work better if there is zero background noise and you have only one speaker who speaks clearly and in a virtual monotone.
                  2. Idiomatic phrases, rare words and jargon will cause the engine to stumble, as its dictionary (at least the English version) seems somewhat limited.
                  3. You must take care in editing the text metadata, as minimal spell corrections and editing can throw off the sync of the text with the clip.
                  4. Make sure you have a very fast computer (or a lot of spare time), if you want to convert a long clip.

                   

                  All in all, the speech to text tool is a modestly helpful tool that could be really useful, if it is eventually upgraded.

                  • 6. Re: Premiere Pro Speech-to-Text Transcription Demostration
                    Todd_Kopriva Adobe Employee

                    The conversion of speech to text isn't good enough to serve as a transcript on its own. But it is, in my experience, good enough to serve as a useful basis for editing based on the words spoken in a clip. I think that some people have assumed some things about this feature that we don't assume.

                     

                    There are a couple of demonstrations linked to from near the top of this page that show that with a few manual corrections you can use this feature to place timecode-accurate markers for words spoken in a clip so that you can trigger certain actions at those times. Similarly, you can navigate to words in a sequence to find the places for edits.

                     

                    There are recommendations here for how to improve the results.