Like everything else MySociety does, this rocks: crowdsourced timestamping to align captures of BBC Parliament video with the Hansard record already archived and searchable at TheyWorkForYou.com.
Genius.
I’ve matched 5 clips which at time of writing makes me the 25th most-prolific stamper today. WooT!
[thanks to Jo for the link]
[update: thanks to Ben Courtney for the link correction. Idiot operator error, apologies)
It’s disturbingly addictive. Once you’ve found one sync point (searching for a phrase to make the text match the video seems the best way), it’s really tempting just to keep stamping the same debate. I wonder if they use the timestamps they’ve already collected to improve their approximation of what’s when by some sort of linear interpolation. My guess is that they currently don’t, but I’m wondering how to test this hypothesis…
That as my impression too - that they don’t interpolate. I guess it’s one of those features that you’d think would make sense, but certainly isn’t critical and may not even be necessary in practice. So the smart thing to do is punt it to version 2.
But yes, even with it occasionally being brain-dead, it’s still frighteningly addictive. My biggest gripe was it asking me to match ‘Rose –’ rather a lot, which as far as I can tell is a stage direction rather than dialogue.