Time is of the essence: an evaluation of temporal compression algorithms

Although speech is a potentially rich information source, a major barrier to exploiting speech archives is the lack of useful tools for efficiently accessing lengthy speech recordings. This paper develops and evaluates techniques for temporal compression - reducing the time people take to listen to a recording while still extracting critical information. We first describe an exploratory study that identifies novel excision techniques that remove unimportant words or utterances from the recording. We then develop a new method for evaluating how well temporal compression supports users in forming a general understanding of a recording. Applying this method, we demonstrate that excision techniques are generally more effective than standard compression techniques that simply speed up the entire recording. Categories & Subject Descriptors H.5.1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Multimedia Information Systems - audio input/output, evaluation/methodology; H.5.2 [Information Inte...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Simon Tucker, Steve Whittaker
• Keywords: CHI 2006, Human Computer Interaction, Lengthy Speech Recordings, Standard Compression Techniques, Temporal Compression