Re: Speak to Text
- From: John McGhie <john@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:17:11 +0930
Hi Clive:
Oh! I wondered how long it would be before they ported that to the Mac :-)
DragonDictate is the application used by the court reporters to do
"real-time" transcription for the majority of Australia's large court cases.
It is a very solid product.
I know this because a friend of mine that I am going motorcycling with next
weekend sells the court reporting solution... Clive, we're coming past your
front door: put the billy on!
That's a very keen price too: $199.00 with a microphone.
Notes:
Speech recognition requires a very powerful computer with lots of memory to
work well.
It says on the website that it will run in 10.4.11 or 10.5.2 or greater.
Don't try to get away with it: speech recognition is very demanding on the
hardware.
Clive is quite correct: don't try to use the built-in microphone, you will
get very poor accuracy. MacSpeech provides a choice of noise-cancelling
microphones with the boxed product: such a microphone is essential for good
results.
Note that they do not claim an "accuracy" on the website. It's about 95 per
cent, rising to about 99 per cent after careful and thorough training.
Now: Think carefully: 95 per cent accuracy means one correction in each
sentence. 99 per cent means one correction each paragraph. Can you live
with that?
Note that these "errors" will not be misspellings-- the spell-checker will
not pick them up, you have to proof-read carefully.
This technology is very sensitive to speaker and accent. If you do not have
a clear middle-American accent, you will not get such good results.
However: The thing that catches most people out is that it is extremely
difficult to "dictate" a passage of text. The skills of giving dictation to
a secretary are long gone. Most people these days can type a lot quicker
than they can dictate and correct.
I am 58 years old: I tried computer dictation and gave it away: I never
acquired the skills needed to dictate sufficiently accurately! 40-odd years
ago, my first boss in the Air Force could dictate two whole pages of a
letter without a pause or correction, I saw him do it many times. And it
came out in perfect, grammatical English. Our esteemed correspondent Clive
could probably do it!! But I can't... :-)
Hope this helps
On 29/10/08 11:58 AM, in article
C52E1563.3C93A%REMOVETHISoffice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Clive Huggan"
<REMOVETHISoffice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello Clare,
Dictation software on the Mac severely lagged behind that on the PC, for
many years. However, a few months ago a major advance occurred with the
release of MacSpeech Dictate (http://www.macspeech.com), which uses the same
engine as Dragon has perfected on the PC. It won "Best of Show" at Macworld
2008.
I was about to say "However, I haven't bought it yet because of its
limitation in not being able to train for spelling and phrases". But in
confirming the MacSpeech website for you I see they now have a version 1.2
that has these features. I can't recall what (if anything) else caused me
to postpone my purchase, and don't have time at present to do that -- but
some googling will bring results as there are some good discussions of it
around the Web. Over all, it seems a very good piece of kit, albeit version
1.0's inability to learn as it goes based on your voice input was a major
inhibitor.
I recall it needs an Intel-powered Mac and (I *think* -- don't trust me
though) Leopard.
And although it will work, surprisingly well I gather, with the Mac's
inbuilt microphone it's best to use a purpose-built microphone, especially
if there are background noises where you are working. Soon after you get
used to such software you become irritated by errors that are avoidable, and
99.8% accuracy (just a figure out of my head, though I expect it's not too
far out) is no consolation if it produces twice as many errors as 99.9%!
It will work with other applications, too.
Thanks for asking this question; I had not expected them to bring out this
new version so soon. Now all I need is for Apple to bring out a "proper"
17" MacBook Pro soon, to replace my non-Intel PowerBook, so I can buy it!
Cheers,
Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the Americas and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
====================================================
On 29/10/08 12:12 PM, in article 59b5f291.-1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
"clare_S929@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <clare_S929@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel
Is there a way to speak the text you wish to type into the computer's
microphone and have word type what you speak for you?
--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/
Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:john@xxxxxxxxxxx
.
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- From: clare_S929
- Re: Speak to Text
- From: Clive Huggan
- Speak to Text
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