seeking auto transcribing for a small meeting

[Edgar D' Souza]

Lisa:
As you say, most of the current crop of voice-recog software need to
be trained to a particular individual. If your SMEs are reluctant to
write or type, I don't even think it possible they'll agree to go
through an enrolment process with your voice-recog tool :-) since not
only is it time-consuming, it also induces a mild feeling of... um..
embarrassment? :)

As John says, trying to voice-recog SME mumbles could be a really
painful process! And once you have text in a doc, /then/ you need to
pound that keyboard, re-shaping it into good text. :-/

Suggestion:
If you can get a DVR that simply records, at good quality, everything
that is said at a meeting (including where you raise your hand when
someone mumbles, and re-state it clearly for the recorder) then
possibly you could use your copy of Dragon or ViaV on your computer to
re-dictate the content you want in the document. Your headphones are
playing back from your DVR, which you pause every few sentences,
re-compose the facts in your head, and dictate a much better version
of what was said into your microphone, which feeds the voice-recog
software. Since you're digesting the raw info and re-wording it
/before/ dictating to ViaV/Dragon, you have less
re-shaping/wordsmithing to do; since you've trained your voice-recog
s/w to your voice and diction, you ought to get 90+% accuracy on the
recognition. So your transcription phase will take a bit longer than
the original meetings, but it's more feasible, IMHO, than trying to
auto-transcribe, at pretty low accuracy, the meandering mumblings of
SMEs.

HTH,
Ed.


On 8/3/07, Lisa Priester <lpriester at castandcrew.com> wrote:
> So I've been asked to find out whether anyone knows of some digital recorder
> and transcription software that would work in a small meeting setting, in
> which I and a manager would interview the SME to capture the needed info. I
> know of software such as DragonNaturallySpeaking and ViaVoice, but those
> seemed to be design for use by one person with a headset plugged into
> his/her desktop.
>
> Is anyone familiar with a setup that would allow two or three people to be
> recorded and their words automatically transcribed?