Mark Randall, Adobe

Wednesday, July 23, 2008
HUGE: Adobe Readies Voice-to-Text Metadata For Flash Video

PALO ALTO -- Beginning later this year, Flash video will contain rich metadata in the form of automated transcripts. Adobe is readying a system that uses speech-to-text technology directly into the production process.

Adobe's plans were revealed yesterday by Adobe VP Jim Guerard, who was a featured speaker at the Beet.TV Executive Roundtable held on the Stanford Campus.

If the Adobe project is widely adopted, it will have a profound impact on how Flash video is searched and discovered. Right now there is very little text data in Flash files. Recently YouTube began including voice-to-text generated metadata into some of the clips in the presidential campaign.

At NAB in May, I interviewed Adobe's top Flash strategist Mark Randall on the topic of voice-to-text and its implications. I've reposted that video here. Mark is speaking here at the AlwaysOn conference and I hope to catch up with him.

--- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer
http://www.beet.tv/2008/07/huge-adobe-read.html