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Software for editing and printing multiple timed streams
via email
I'm looking for some software suggestions. What I need is a way to print
out various streams of text, all synchronized to a printed time scale.
This doesn't have to happen in real time, nor in an automated way. I can
manually create the needed alignment. How can I create a printable,
textual/graphic representation of various event streams, as they happened
in time?
The entire concept is complex, but the first layer is simple. I need to
present the English text of a 15 minute lecture, that was presented and
videotaped. If that was all I needed, a text document would do it. The
next step makes it harder. I need to combine some visual representation of
a time scale with the lecture text. The combination would allow the reader
to see what word was being spoken at a given moment, for example, what word
the speaker was pronouncing precisely two minutes and eighteen seconds
after he began the lecture. Alternatively, when the speaker uttered the
word "cumquat," what was the elapsed time?
I'm imagining a display of the text of a lecture, line by line. Below each
line of text, we need some sort of time code, such as vertical tick marks
indicating every second. The tick marks should probably be regular in
their spacing, so we need some way to adjust the text of the lecture, in
order to synchronize the printed words with the time of their delivery.
This is beyond what I know how to do in a word processor, but it gets
worse.
The lecture was interpreted into American Sign Language (ASL). The
interpretation was videotaped. The interpreter, of course, signed the
words with somewhat different syntax, and with a varying delay after the
speakers utterances. The ASL will be transcribed into English text
description, and we would like to place that text stream in synchrony with
the original lecture text. As with the English lecture text, we want to be
able to see in the printout what was being signed at a given time, and vice
versa.
Using the lecture text, the time scale, and the ASL transcription, we could
compare what the lecturer and interpreter where doing at a given moment.
For example, we might measure the average lag time between the speaker and
the interpreter, to see how that varied over time. We are actually
interested in several features of the interaction, but all require a way to
relate the ASL and the lecture to the time scale.
The last layer of complexity is adding the reactions of the deaf audience.
Several deaf participants watched the videotape of the lecture being signed
in ASL. They marked the video for certain key features of the information
presentation. We would like to be able to display those marks- when the
different participants marked the different events- and to be able to see
how these marks related to the ASL, and to each other. The same time-based
relationships needs to be shown. The goal of this research is to improve
interpretation, so that the deaf community can receive more effective
services.
I am hoping that someone might know of software that could be adapted to
this need of displaying multiple time streams. I haven't thought of any
good way to approach it. The only bad way that I have come up with, is to
use a layout program like InDesign, to make a series of text boxes, each
one line high, one for each data stream. Each stream could be linked to
the appropriate box on the next page. Synchronization could be
accomplished by adding spaces in the text.
This is a really ugly idea. I'm hoping someone can give me a better one.
Thanks for your thoughts,
Derek Roff
Language Learning Center
Ortega Hall 129, MSC03-2100
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
505/277-7368, fax 505/277-3885
Internet: derek
unm.eduMark as Read
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