WinPitch Corpus, a Text to Speech Alignment Tool for Multimodal Corpora

WinPitch Corpus is an innovative software program for computer-aided alignment of large corpora. It provides a method for easy and precise selection of alignment units, ranging from syllable to whole sentences in a hierarchical storing system of aligned data. The method is based on the ability to link visually and select with a mouse click a text segment with the perception of the corresponding speech sound played back at slower speech. Clicking on a text segment generates bidirectional speech-text pointers defining the alignment. This method has the advantage on emerging automatic processes to be effective even for poor quality speech recordings, or in case of speakers’ voice overlap. A recent version of the software handles multimedia files and is capable to display the corresponding video streams at slower speed.