Patent Document ID: 6055495
Application ID: 08846612

Base Claim:
1. A method of speech segmentation comprising processing speech data so as to detect pauses and characterised by forming speech block boundaries at a selected subset of the pauses, wherein said subset of said pauses is selected so as to approximate each speech block to a preselected target speech block length.

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Claim 2:
2. A method according to claim 1 comprising: devising an error metric which indicates how much a speech block length deviates from the target speech block length; calculating the error value for the speech data in a file; detecting the most significant pause in the speech data; calculating the average error value for the speech blocks on either side of the speech block boundary at the pause and retaining the speech block boundary in the speech data if said average error value is less than the current error value; iteratively detecting the next most significant pause, calculating the average error value for the speech blocks on either side of the speech block boundary at the next most significant pause and retaining the speech block boundary in the speech data if this further reduces the error value.