In digital archives, accessibility reigns supreme. Yet for many curators and researchers, the true “crown jewel” of their AV collections—the transcript—often lives apart from the media itself. You may have a beautifully crafted legacy transcript and a compelling audio recording, but without timecodes to connect them, they remain isolated in separate worlds.
That changes today. We are thrilled to highlight a game-changer for the Aviary platform: Forced Transcript Alignment powered by Gentle.
Many archives possess "legacy" transcripts—highly edited, polished documents that capture the essence of an interview but lack the technical timestamps needed for modern online access. Historically, syncing these transcripts manually was a grueling, expensive task.
Gentle is a robust alignment service integrated directly into Aviary to bridge this gap. It takes your plain text transcripts and automatically aligns them with your audiovisual files.
Gentle isn't just a basic syncing tool; it’s designed to handle the real-world imperfections of archival content. Here is why it belongs in your marketing toolkit:
Lenient & Resilient: Gentle is famously forgiving. Whether you are working with a low-quality field recording or a scratchy oral history from decades ago, Gentle can find the "hooks" it needs to align the text.| Feature | The Benefit |
| No Timecode? No Problem |
Align even the most heavily edited text files to audio or video. |
| Format Preservation |
Keeps your original paragraphs and spacing exactly as you intended. |
| English Language Specialist |
Optimized for English but lenient enough for a wide variety of recording qualities. |
| Auto-Generated Captions |
Improves user experience and accessibility with zero extra effort. |
By utilizing Gentle within Aviary, you aren't just storing files; you are creating a guided, intuitive experience. Researchers can jump to the exact moment a word is mentioned, and students can follow along with captions, significantly enhancing the pedagogical and research value of your archive.
Ready to see your transcripts in a new light? Log in to your Aviary dashboard today and explore how Gentle can bring your legacy content into the future, or contact the Aviary team for more information.