Get ready to be amazed. Adobe is working on a new creative tool that is being referred to as ‘Photoshop for audio’ by not only the crowd on the interwebs but also Adobe developer Zeyu Jin himself. The company today showed off this alluring piece of software, codenamed Project VoCo, at the Adobe MAX 2016 Conference in California.
Now talking about what exactly does this software do? Project VoCo can be termed as a next-gen audio editing tool which enables you to generate authentic sounding audio based on anybody’s voice sample.
To make it work, you’ll first need to input a 20-minute audio recording of the person whose voice you’re trying to emulate. The software will then analyse the file, and – here comes the most fun and interesting part of this app – allow you to edit the voice recording to deliver natural results. You’ll also have the option to cut, copy and past words from this speech sample to create sentences that weren’t actually spoken. The highlight of the software, however, will have the ability to add words(text) that didn’t originally appear in the sample audio file.
According to an official statement released by Adobe, the software works in the following manner:
We have developed a technology called Project VoCo in which you can simply type in the word or words that you would like to change or insert into the voiceover. The algorithm does the rest and makes it sound like the original speaker said those words.
Though 20 minutes is particularly a very short span of time to understand the speech pattern of anybody’s voice but the demo showed off the modulations successfully. Zeyu Jiu simply typed a new line of text into a textbox and those words were redubbed in the same voice of the speaker. The demo, in my honest opinion, was pretty impressive and I would love to try out the capabilities of this tech. My only concern being, how would I source 20 minutes of continuous voice samples from any person?
There is currently very sparse info on the development and release of this product. The software is currently being built as part of a collaboration between the researchers at Adobe and Princeton University, reports The Verge. The company sees an immense use of this technology for podcasters, narrators and other voiceover actors who wouldn’t need to visit the studio for a re-recording. The production manager could just use Project VoCo to produce a natural voice sample to replace the unclear parts.
Here’s a closer look at Project VoCo. Adobe wants you to make crazy stuff with this tool, just like you’ve been making with Photoshop. The company wants to revolutionalize audio editing with this tool.
