Roger Ebert finds his voice using remastered audio technology

Film critic Roger Ebert, who lost his voice to cancer surgery in 2006, regains it through the help of technology. Remarkably, his voice was re-captured using samples from old DVD recordings.

It was a simple suggestion. People told Roger Ebert, an American film critic, to use old recordings of his voice in DVD commentary to regain his speaking voice. The 68 year-old, who has been a columnist for the Chicago-Sun Tribune since the late 60s, but perhaps best known for his film review and criticism with co-host Gene Siskel in At the movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, had been silenced with complications with thyroid cancer. But for an avid man so adept in his career at speaking about films, the circumstances are fitting that it was movie technology that has helped him regain his voice. A UK company named CereProc was able to use "good quality audio" from Ebert's old commentary on classic films such as Citizen Kane and Casablanca and remaster a usable digital text-to-voice application for the the film critic. After several tweaks with pure audio samples, CereProc was able to reproduce the recognizable voice to the elation of Ebert's family. The enthusiastic Ebert is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying, "Yes, 'Roger Jr.' needs to be smoother in tone and steadier in pacing, but the little rascal is good." "To hear him coming from my own computer made me ridiculously happy", he continued.