[Corpora-List] Query on Linking Text & Sound Files

[Rita Carol Simpson]

Dear Colleagues,

Does anyone have first-hand experience with any tools or techniques for
linking existing text transcripts of speech to sound files?

Specifically, the MICASE project team is looking for input on how to go
about linking the sound files (currently in mp3 format, but convertable
to other formats) with the text transcripts, in relatively small
increments, and deliver the sound files online along with the transcripts
(which are already available online, via the website listed below).

Ideally we would like to link the transcripts to the sound files in such a
way that from any point in the transcript you could click on a sound file
link and get to that portion of the transcript -- to the nearest, say,
30-second or 1-minute increment. I realize the labor to do this for nearly
200 hours of naturally-recorded speech may be significant, but we are
prepared to hire a number of research assistants to do as much of the
markup, chunking, & aligning tasks as possible.

If you know of & have used any kind of software that will simplify or
streamline this process at all, or have suggestions about how we might go
about it, I would very much appreciate hearing from you.
(I do have a copy of the CSAE project's SoundWriter program, but because
I have not been able to find any documentation on it, I cannot properly
evaluate it; I suspect, however, that it's not exactly suited to our
goals -- specifically the eventual web-delivery aspect. If you've
successfully used this particular program, I would be interested in
finding out more about it.)

I will be happy to post a summary to the list of any replies I get.

Thank you in advance,

Rita Simpson
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Rita Simpson, PhD.
Project Director, Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English
English Language Institute, University of Michigan   TEL:  734-763-7133
www.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/micase.htm      www.hti.umich.edu/m/micase/
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