The Melissi "Black Box" is based on several years of research into the needs of simultaneous interpretation students in many areas of Europe.

Black Box is a stand-alone single-user program.

The program allows users to create and use interpreting exercises and complete courses (known as modules), and includes facilities for simultaneous, liason and consecutive interpretation with transcriptions of source and target speech. This is done with an intuitive drag & drop interface.

Exercises or entire modules can be packed into one file for ease of delivery.

The suite can make a "CD Image" ready to save to CD or DVD for sale or deployment.

It also includes a module for recording audio material from microphone, cassette or other sources to the computer hard disk.

Its main features are:

• Simultaneous playback and recording using video or audio as source material
  

• Timed scrolling "autocue" text for training in swift interpretation of textual sources
  

• Mouse roll-over text display with several categories of notes defined by authors
  

• Separate Internet links panel for connection to valuable online resources
  

• Provision of example recordings for comparison with student work
  

• Visual display of recording waveforms for feedback on voice modulation
  

• Integrated text editor, with full Unicode support in all Windows® fonts, including right to left text entry.
  

• Video can be scaled from very small to true full screen and automatically adjusts for widesceen
  

• Optional compression of recordings