Has PhotoShop been good for photography?
Don’t answer that. Either way, does it follow that an analogous device or program would be good for voice-acting?
That’s the basic question, I guess. The only reason I can think of as to why someone would want to do that is to have greater control in post (at a reduced price).
But while PhotoShop has opened up incredible creativity for images, VoCo would only “dumb down” the human voice.
VoCO?
Uh-huh, VoCO. I’d written about it before, but it didn’t have a name yet. Now apparently it does. And the comparison to PhotoShop is apt, ’cause VoCO is being developed in Adobe Labs. See my previous article here.
The idea is to create software that could take various words from a voice track, and parse them out separately to the point where they could be added, subtracted, copied, pasted and otherwise manipulated to the creator’s wishes, and all come out sounding just peachy.
I had almost forgotten about it until I saw an article about it yesterday in the Economic Times (of India!).
Not that the Economic Times of India is any treasure chest of VO information, but big corporations sneak stuff in sideways using all sorts of outlets to keep ideas alive these days, And don’t forget how much coding goes on in India to service USA computer program development.
“…the technology could provide a launching point for creating personalized robotic voices that sound natural…”
I’ve written about synthetic voices ever since Kindle came out with text-to-speech in it’s very first device. The voice acting community agrees artificial intelligence will NEVER be able to re-create the fine nuances of the human voice in a meaningful way.
But we’re biased. Garry Kasparov (reigning world chess champ) never thought he’d get beat by Deep Blue either (it happened).
In the end, we’re probably right, but what’s the chance that a good many customers may think a VoCo product is just adequate enough for their video game, or eLearning course.
More control, reduced price.
Change happens.
CourVO