Casto

Inspiration

While staying at home, some of us spent way too much time watching shows and cat videos. How could we be more productive while enjoying our favorite shows? Watching TV is a fun way to learn new languages. However, there is no way to practice it. What if you could reenact your favorite scene while improving your language command?

What it does

Casto allows you to search for your favorite videos and practice your speaking skills by voice casting them. You can choose to practice alone or invite your friends to learn with you.

How I built it

Using ReactJS, some video player, speech to text API, and firebase to host the application

Challenges I ran into

Finding the right speech to text API

At first, I considered using something similar to a karaoke system. However, it would be weird to use Patrick's accent in English. In the end, I realize that the most basic WebSpeechAPI works well for this use case, at least for now.

Hosting the web app

As this is my first time hosting an app with firebase hosting, it took me a while to figure out how it works

Removing Patrick's voice in the video

It's like removing the best part of the video :C

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Code

Initially, I was worried that the audio recording feature might not work when the video is playing. After a few workarounds, it worked.

Design

I'm quite proud of the logo. I think it's cute and it has a small microphone as his nose.

What we learned

Speech to Text

I spent a bit of time figuring out what each function does. Also, I tried to compare different tools and decided to go with the easiest one

What's next

I think the app would be more fun if there's some game involved. There could be a leaderboard or something.

Built With

• firebase
• google-cloud
• react
• speech-to-text