Friday off the wall: Does anyone know anything about voice recognition software?

[EFerrari]

I'm trying to figure out how to efficiently transcribe radio shows for people who can't hear them.

The other day John Dean said in an interview that he dictates to his computer. Is it that easy now?

[NYC_SKP]

1. I did my masters thesis on VR, as used with LD students.

"Dragon Naturally Speaking" was the best I tried and the one I used for the study.

It was the easiest to train on.

I was really impressed with the utility wrapped up in Windows XP.

I tried a Mac package, too, iSpeak or iVoice, I've forgotten, but it wasn't as good as Dragon.

I don't think, however, that you'll find anything that will take what comes out of a speaker's voice on a radio program and turn it into text.

The programs I used needed to learn your voice and even then made errors.

But don't give up, technology moves fast and I did my study in 2004-2005, much has changed.

:thumbsup:

[tigereye]

9. is a copy of your thesis available? I work with a lot of kids with LD...

sounds very interesting..

[NYC_SKP]

10. Here's what I could do.

I could find the word document file.
PM me with an email address and I can send it that way.

:hi:

[InkAddict]

2. Fairly easy to capture audio; a bit more difficult to auto-convert without keyboarding; however,

check this little gadget and associated software ------ http://www.livescribe.com/smartpen/index.html

Some transcriptionists access C-phone re-recordings or digital recorders w/footpedal/keyboard menu/software controls for transcribing; then keyboarding skills or other software like ViaVoice or Natural Speaking for transcription

http://www.transcriptiongear.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT

That should give you some ideas; also check out medical dictation/transcription built into EMR/PHR systems.

[EFerrari]

3. Thank you, InkAddict.

[Skittles]

4. all I know is

the blind software engineers I talk to on the phone seem to know what's going on before I do - my bet is it is pretty damn good

[EFerrari]

6. Wow. I used to do optical scanning -- had to scan a bunch of texts

with a hand scanner in grad school and the recognition was cr@p. But Dean sounded as if it audible stuff he used was pretty good. I'm trying to figure out how to make transcripts of things like a radio show.

[HopeHoops]

5. We had some on a Sun over 15 years ago. Funny story...

It had to be trained before you could use it and it was really good at understanding everybody, not just the person who trained it, with ONE MAJOR exception. It couldn't understand a damn thing any of the Australians said. No matter how hard they tried to suppress their accents, it just ignored them. But the REALLY funny part is that when any of us (Americans) tried to emulate an Australian accent, it had no problem understanding what we said. The president, being Australian, banned the software from the office. He was a real dickhead anyway.

[EFerrari]

7. LOL! That is funny! Was it because moe nasal and further back

in the mouth? LOL!

[HopeHoops]

12. We couldn't figure it out - but at least five Australians tried it without luck.

Absolutely none of the Americans had trouble using it. Weird, huh?

[EFerrari]

14. I tried on an Australian accent and the sound has to come from

higher up and further back in your head.

That is weird. :)

[tigereye]

8. just that it never worked well for me with dicatation - it didn't like my voice

in the 80s, I saw one of the first Kurzweil machines when I worked at the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped...

[NV Whino]

11. I just bought MacSpeech Dictate

It has some bugs, but I'm in the early days of learning to use it. All-in-all, I'm very pleased with it. The hardest thing is to remember to say the punctuation. It comes in 13 dialects including "teen," and British. They also have legal and medical packages.$300 includes a Blu-tooth mic. This is Mac Leopard and Snow Leopard only. They have other programs for PCs and I think their older program works with earlier Mac OS. Worth the money in my opinion.

[EFerrari]

16. Cool. Thanks for putting me in the ball park.

[Turbineguy]

13. I use Dragon Naturally Speaking 10.

I am far from an expert. But it can type faster than I can. My personal best was 58 pages for a textbook in 90 minutes.

It takes some getting used to and enforces good speaking discipline. Think, organize, then speak. Thinking out loud will get you gibberish. Also you have to speak clearly. Clearing your throat yields strange results. You have to work with it to correct grammar.

It's pretty easy to learn and teach. You have to teach it how to respond to your voice by reading prepared texts.

[EFerrari]

15. Thank you, I will check that out.

:hi:

[triguy46]

17. We use Dragonspeak medical voice recognition. Works just fine.