Welcome to the innovative realm of Pozotron, a powerhouse in scripted audio production. In our exclusive conversation with Adam, the CEO, discover how Pozotron's suite of AI-powered tools transforms audiobook narration. Whether you're a seasoned pro or a novice, Pozotron's features streamline the proofing process, offer pronunciation guidance, and facilitate collaboration. Dive into the company's culture of flexibility, transparency, and collaboration, and learn how AI is harnessed to enhance efficiency without replacing human narrators. Hear success stories, explore upcoming features, and stay ahead of industry trends.
Ready to level up your audiobook production? LET’S GO!!!
Introduction to Pozotron: Thanks so much for chatting with us today, Adam! Can you provide a brief overview of Pozotron for our readers who may be unfamiliar with your software?
Pozotron is a suite of software powered by AI that can significantly reduce the time required for scripted audio production. Our tools cover both pre and post-production processes, making it easier for anyone working in scripted audio production to be more efficient and focus more on the creative aspects of their project.
One of our more well-known tools is the Proofing Tool, which compares your recorded audio to your manuscript and provides you with a list of potential pickups for your review. We also offer Script Preparation Tools that can help prevent these pickups from occurring in the first place by speeding up your pronunciation research and character voice planning.
If you're new to Pozotron, we recommend visiting our website or watching our Introductory Demo to learn more about our software.
Proof Listening and Error Detection: One of the key features of Pozotron is its ability to proofread for mistakes in audiobook narration. Can you explain how this process works and the benefits it brings to narrators and producers?
Our proofing algorithm matches your manuscript text to the narrated audio and catches every mispronunciation, inserted word, missed word, and long pause. It can also identify noises that shouldn’t be there, like background noise outside your booth or any distortions or clips. You can think of it as a “spell check” for your audio files.
This helps narrators and producers massively because it allows you to speed up the proofing process by quickly working through all the pickups that need to be fixed. It can also automatically produce pickup reports and DAW markers that help you fix these pickups efficiently as well.
Script Preparation Tools: Pozotron offers script preparation tools, such as a pronunciation guide and character reference sheet. How do these tools assist narrators in preparing for their recordings?
Pozotron’s script preparation tools are essentially designed to stop pickups before you start recording. It helps narrators and voice-over actors to be more accurate while speeding up their pre-production research.
The best example I can give is to imagine getting to the end of recording a novel, just to realize that the main character’s name was mispronounced hundreds of times throughout the book. The time it would take to fix this would be staggering and our tools help to avoid situations like this (and fix them if they happen).
We have multiple tools available, but the most well-known ones are the Pronunciation Research Guide and Character Voice Guide.
The Pronunciation Research Guide scans your manuscript and extracts all the complex, rare, and foreign words you may not know how to pronounce. Then when you add them to your research list, it will automatically look up the correct pronunciation in your chosen pronunciation dictionary. The Character Voice Guide automatically scans for character names in a manuscript and provides a user interface to record character voices, insert character notes, and customize accent cues.
Integration with Dictionaries: You mentioned that the software integrates with dictionaries for reference. Can you go into this a little more? How does this integration streamline the research process for narrators, and what types of dictionaries are available?
Within our Script Prep Tools, we have multiple integrated dictionaries. The main ones are Oxford (GB & US), Merriam-Webster, and Forvo, which are pulled in automatically if the pronunciation exists in their database. We also support multiple languages in Forvo, including English, Spanish, French, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, and Dutch
You also have one-click access to search for the pronunciation of that word in Merriam-Webster, Oxford, Forvo, Youglish, Onelook, and HowJSay. Finally, if the pronunciation doesn’t exist or you prefer to input your research, you can record custom pronunciation audio snippets and phonetic text as well.
This can help streamline your pre-production process since it’s all pulled together automatically, compared with manual search and input pronunciations.
Collaboration and Sharing Features: The ability to share pronunciations and character notes seems like a unique and collaborative aspect of Pozotron. How does this feature work?
Put simply, you have the option to share your pronunciation guide and character voice guide with anyone outside of Pozotron in multiple ways. You can share access to the project, allowing other users to contribute to the work, or in a read-only format using our “Shareable Online Packet”.
What this does is allow you to bring in other parties that may have more knowledge about the pronunciation of words or the ideal performance for a character. What’s more, it doesn't cost you or your collaborator at all!
This is great for a wide variety of scenarios, but a good example is when you need to collaborate with an author on a particularly tricky script, like a Sci-Fi novel where there may be numerous fictional (and made up!) character names and places. Being able to work together before the recording even begins can be a huge time saver for everyone involved.
All our features allow for collaboration with multiple users using the SHARE button on the top right of each Pozotron page!
Company Culture and Values: As the CEO, can you share some insights into Pozotron's company culture and values, especially in serving the audiobook industry?
As a team, we have set clear company values that govern all our day-to-day interactions (with each other, customers, and potential customers). Our core team values are flexibility, friendliness, transparency, and collaboration.
We especially prioritize providing excellent customer service, because we believe it can greatly impact a customer's overall experience with a product or service. If something goes wrong, we want our customers to know that we will respond quickly and resolve the issue for them as fast as possible. One thing we do often is take note of instances when we’ve each received bad customer service from other companies and use those experiences to learn and improve our internal practices.
Our goal is to ensure that every customer feels valued and supported throughout their interactions with our company.
A.I.: I think all of us narrators are nervous about how A.I. will affect the industry. How does Pozotron prioritize innovation and stay responsive to the evolving needs of the audiobook narration community?
Our top priority has always been to ensure the security of the data that passes through Pozotron. We do not share any information outside of Pozotron and only use the data to improve and refine our algorithms in accordance with our terms of service. This makes our software more accurate and effective for all our users.
In our case, AI is being used to make narrators and voice-over actors more efficient and NOT to replace them.
If anyone wishes to learn more about how we use data, we suggest reading our terms of service for a better understanding, reading this FAQ on our use of AI and customer data, or watching the webinar we recorded in February 2023 on AI and Data Use.
User Feedback and Success Stories: What kind of feedback have you received from users of Pozotron, and are there any success stories or notable instances where the software made a significant impact on a project?
The most common feedback we hear from users is that it is a “lifesaver” for those recording scripted audio, as it has saved them an incredible amount of time.
This is exactly what we are hoping for, as time is money, and the more efficient the workflow, the better for everyone involved. We’ve got a ton of them listed on our Testimonials page on our website.
The one that stands out the most for me is from one of our Publisher customers, who on one of their first projects they ran through Pozotron cut their post-production time in half.
If memory serves, they had budgeted for 35 hours for QC and completed the work in 17. When he shared that story at the next staff meeting, the collective gasp shocked him!
How does user feedback influence the ongoing development and improvement of Pozotron?
User feedback has been incredibly valuable to our company over the years.
Many of the features that are implemented in Pozotron Studio came from user feedback and suggestions. It is important to us that we build something helpful and easy to navigate.
Our Scan Occurrences tool, for example, which allows you to enter a word and Pozotron will play all mentions of that word from your audio files back to back, came out of a user suggestion where a narrator mispronounced a character’s name throughout a book and needed to fix the hundreds of mistakes! Scan Occurrences took a job that should have taken hours (or days) of time, and fixed the issue in minutes
We highly encourage anyone and everyone to submit feature requests on our website or email us at hello@pozotron.com. We read and discuss every request that comes through.
Future Developments and Features: Are there any upcoming features or developments in the pipeline for Pozotron that you can share with our readers?
We have a ton of new things in the pipeline, but I’m most excited about some new developments to our Script Prep Tools. We are building a tool that will allow users to pull a list of all descriptions of a character’s voice from a manuscript automatically, making it easier and faster to pull the right cues to ensure your character's voice matches the author’s intent.
We are also planning to build a teleprompter that will allow users to mark up all elements of a script with a few clicks of a mouse, like choosing what color to use for highlighting character dialogue, adding links to audio samples for pronunciation or a voice, and lots more. Once the pre-production research is merged into the teleprompter, narrators will be able to use that to read quickly and accurately during narration.
Industry Trends and Insights: From your vantage point, what are some current trends in the voice-over and audiobook narration industry, and how is Pozotron positioned to address these trends?
The most obvious and well-discussed trend we have seen recently is the proliferation of AI voices and how it's going to affect narrators and voice-over actors. These companies are growing and getting better, so it's incumbent on narrators to continue to improve their craft to stay ahead of the robots! There are a lot of things still up in the air with synthetic narration (like how governments and the courts will protect the IP of creators), so I’m tracking that pretty closely to see how AI narration will impact audiobooks.
We do our best to stay current with this but as mentioned before, we’ve built out software in such a way that has protected our customers for the beginning. We will continue to prioritize this as the industry evolves and changes.
Can you offer any advice or insights for aspiring audiobook narrators in today's competitive landscape?
Find a group of like-minded narrators who can support you, teach you, and help you (and you to them). There are a ton of fantastic groups out there, either on social media or through industry organizations like the APA, WOVO, or PANA, but make sure you aren’t working alone!
Read your contract. You must be fully aware of every detail, especially with the recent changes in the industry and what can be done with your data. At Pozotron, we go out of our way to make it as clear as possible to ensure that narrators know what is going to be done with the audio they upload to Pozotron.
Always improve! Find ways to keep learning and getting better, whether that’s by using a tool like Pozotron or just learning to improve your craft with better workflows or acting techniques.
Closing Thoughts: How can interested individuals or organizations get started with Pozotron and explore its benefits for their audiobook projects?
Getting started is simple! I encourage you to follow this link here to sign up, which will give you access to a 1-month free trial with 7 hours of free proofing credits instead of 1 hour that we normally offer. This also includes free access to all our Script Prep Tools.
You will hear from us shortly after signing up to set up a demo where we can focus on your unique workflow and show you the tools that will benefit you the most.
That sounds fantastic! Thank you for offering that to our readers! Is there anything else you would like our readers to know about Pozotron or any final thoughts you'd like to share?
We have an “open door” policy. If you have any questions about how our software works or would like to know more about our terms of service and privacy policy, we highly encourage you to book a meeting with us here.
To get The Audiobook Guy special offer of 1 Month Free of Pozotron, Including the Script Prep Tools and 7 hours of Free Proofing Credits follow the link HERE
(Signing up without the referral only gives you 1 hour of proofing credits, so make sure you get the special offer!)
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