Why did we start developping Transcriber?

In the framework of a project for automatic transcription of Broadcast News in French, we need a corpus of manually transcribed Broadcast News material to train and develop the system. For that purpose, a suitable software environment is required. The LDC already has the experience of creating Broadcast News corpora. However, the software environment they use run on high-end servers or rely on third-party software. We therefore looked for other solutions (which are detailed in an article presented at the LREC conference; see Question 3 below), but none was fully satisfactory, and we decided to build our own tool, in collaboration with the LDC.

Why did we release Transcriber as Free Software?

There are several reasons:

To understand better why one might be willing to distribute software freely, you can read about the philosophy of free software (mirror in Europe) promoted by the SFS.

What is the future of Transcriber?

As it is free software we hope that Transcriber will be widely disseminated and expect it to evolve to suit user's needs if some of them are willing to contribute. The in-house developments will only concern Broadcast News in the short term. The to do list gives a flavour of foreseen evolutions.