I may be in the minority but I really don't care for listening to things sped up. If it's really just about maximizing data transfer, I'd probably rather read a good transcript at that point.
Unfortunately, as I'm sure you've discovered, "good transcripts" don't exist unless someone puts in the effort. :(
I don't mind audio, but I definitely don't understand the value of "talking head" style videos. They're, if not the worst possible information density possible, pretty darn close. A couple hundred megabytes to see someone speaking a few dozen kilobytes of text, and I still can't search it or skim it to see if it covers what I want.
A good transcript isn't really that hard. You just need to pay someone--the ML ones just aren't good enough to publish--and do some light editing. I usually do them for my podcasts. (Though the ML transcripts are good enough for skimming content and I use them if I'm just going to be using some excerpts from the audio.)
I actually find that, for talks with slides, I do like having the inset speaker video. What I tend to do is to start off with a full screen talking head intro with mostly the slides/multimedia and a small speaker video.
Totally agree that a good transcript is way better in almost all cases (except where actual moving visual demo actually helps).
However, are there any good automated transcription tools that can make a good transcript from an imperfect YouTube video? Most of what I've seen is good for humor, and I've even seen some used in a legal deposition context that are downright dangerous (inserting most likely word or phrase in place of what was actually said, so actively decreasing and corrupting info content). This might not be as disastrous for a lecture where there are also office hours, but... anything good out there?
Maybe you'd like to try us out at https://3scri.be. Like I offered above, if you'd like to sign up and drop us a line at support@3scri.be mentioning this thread I can add a hour on top of the 30 minutes trial.
Well, we're new and we think we've the most accurate transcription engine on the market. Why not try us out at https://3scri.be. We give half a hour for free but if you sign up and drop us a line at support@3scri.be I can add on an extra hour for you.
I have had maths lectures where that just doesn't work, so I'd question the "anyone". You need the extra time to fill in the steps the prof left out, because they are obvious to him.
(And yes, I usually also go through presentations at 2x).