SCICrec^TM – interpretation recorder

With SCICrec^TM, you can:

• play videos / audio files from the Speech Repository
• record interpretation (simultaneous and consecutive) to evaluate yourself or have yourself evaluated by a trainer.

Here is how you use SCICrec^TM:

• SCICrec^TM plays the audio of the original speech in both the left and right channels in mono as it displays the video.
• SCICrec^TM records your interpretation as an audio-only track in the central memory, using time stamps that synchronise your interpretation with the video file of the original speech.

You can interpret simultaneously or consecutively:

Consecutive interpretation

SCICrec^TM saves the interpretation audio track on your personal computer. You may then choose to upload it to Multilingualspeeches.tv.
SCICrec^TM plays back just the audio of the interpretation.

Simultaneous interpretation

When you play back your interpretation, SCICrec^TM plays the original speech on the right audio channel and the synchronized audio of the interpretation on the left audio channel (the original audio is muted and the synchronized audio of the interpretation played instead).

This means you and/or your trainer can listen to the complete performance without special equipment – an ordinary headset is all you need.

Replicating a real interpretation environment

As an alternative, with an inexpensive audio splitter you can use an external loudspeaker to listen to the original and a headset to listen to the interpretation, thus replicating a real interpretation environment (what a meeting attendee experiences).

Each audio file is associated with a specific video.

The original speech is fed into the left ear and the interpretation into the right ear. You can control the volume of the original and the interpretation separately.

The winning idea in SCICrec^TM is simplicity:

• no special technical knowledge is required to install and use SCICrec.
• it is free and easy-to-use (no specially-equipped language laboratory required).
• it can run on a very basic personal computer. The accessories necessary to listen and record (loudspeaker and/or headphones, microphone) will likely be present on multimedia computers. If they need to be purchased, inexpensive accessories will generally give adequate results.
• To listen to a speech as described above, you must record the audio. SCICrec^TM does this by encoding an audio-only track in a file separate from the original audio/video file. It then uses a special player to feed audio into the two channels (left and right) from two different files. This makes it unnecessary to re-encode the video to substitute one of the two. The audio-only files can be encoded using fewer computer resources.
• SCICrec^TM enables anyone to use the speeches in the Speech Repository system without having to download a commercial product. If compliant with MPEG-4 standard, specific tools used by universities can also be used to play videos from the Speech Repository. Anyhow Universities are expected to give full access to the system to all students and not limit access to language labs!
• The simplest way to listen to an interpretation and an original at the same time is to feed the original audio into one ear and the interpretation into the other.
• You can use SCICrec^TM to upload your interpretation (audio file) to the Speech Repository server. SCICrec^TM uses audio-only files for exchanging interpretation audio tracks, e.g. between students and trainers. This improves usability because uploading from a personal computer to a server is quicker.
• SCICrec^TM is also configured to download interpretation files from the Speech Repository. This is particularly useful for trainers wishing to assess their students’ work or for students who want to access their interpretation files from different computers.
• On the server side, a content management system (CMS) stores the video and audio files (originals and/or uploaded interpretation files). The CMS uses a mechanism that can associate several uploaded audio files (interpretations by students) to the same original video or audio file. This reflects a teaching situation, where several students work on the same speech. An unlimited number of audio-only interpretation files can be associated with each original video or audio file. The CMS also includes an access-management system that can grant and/or deny access to uploaded interpretations based on a user profile and/or restriction data associated with the interpretations.

Uploaded recordings remain on the server until the user profile is erased or until old files are purged.

SCICrec^TM supports extended character sets for Bulgarian, Greek, etc.

The European Commission has deposited a defensive publication to prevent any patent on future software using the ideas and concepts above mentioned.