One of the most common searches that end up with visitors landing on my blog is people looking for a trial version of Dragon Dictate for the Mac. Good idea, it is quite a hefty purchase price for some software that most know little about and therefore the cost vs risk factor is high. A trial version would be a good lead into the software and would allow people to have a play, see how accurate it is and become more comfortable before committing to a purchase. Great idea but alas a free trial version is not available.
As a compromise Nuance have just released to the Mac App Store Dragon Express for a cut down, yet still significant price of $US49.99 (AU$51.99). This app is an excellent introduction into voice recognition on the Mac and is essentially a cut down version of Dragon Dictate 2.5 – Nuance’s flagship speech recognition product for the Mac.
This makes me smile. I’m a Mac person so anyone who supports this platform automatically gets a big tick from me. This is one of the key reasons I am an Olympus reseller, Olympus have been Mac compatible for years and any company that has the foresight to be Mac compatible should give themselves a pat on the back. Just have a look around next time you are at the airport, at a conference or in a university lecture hall, all you see is a mass of glowing Apple logo. Step up NCH Software (I still go to call them NCH Swift Sound from the old days) who have featured regularly in my blog of late. Following on from their recent release of Express Scribe Pro for Windows comes Express Scribe Pro for Mac.
Express Scribe, the transcription software from NCH Software is famous the world over with seasoned virtual assistants and also with those looking to start a career in the transcription industry. Why? Well mainly because it’s free but there are also plenty of other compelling factors to this software.
Annalisa Holmes from The Transcription People, one of Australia’s dynamic leading outsource transcription service providers, recently wrote a guest post on the NCH blog detailing how her transcription business has grown over the years and how Express Scribe has been a constant throughout that growth. Now with a plethora of big name Australian blue chips using their services, The Transcription People’s large team of transcription typists and proof readers all use Express Scribe in their daily work.
With the release of Express Scribe 5.40 NCH have introduced a paid option, don’t worry a free version is still available, aimed at the Pro transcription provider and adds compatability with the DSS Pro (.ds2) audio format from Olympus, Philips and Grundig digital dictation recorders as well as video.
Olympus have just bumped DSS Player Pro for Windows from version R5.0.11 to R.5.0.12 – grab your copy now by selecting Help -> Check For Updates -> Dictation Module from your DSS Player Pro software (or transcription module if you are using that).
This seems to be a minor bug fix release with the following issues addressed: More
Lets face it, it happens – you lose a thingy or misplace a what-do-ya-ma-call-it and suddenly you can’t do what you always do with your Olympus DS-5000 digital dictaphone. After all the box does come jam packed with cables, a CD, licence keys, docking station, batteries the list goes on. So what happens when you can’t find the thing you need?
Well, all official Olympus resellers will also sell spare parts, the trick is knowing what that spare part is called. In this post I will go through everything that is in the box and show you the part numbers and their RRP (in Australia) to give you an idea if you really should have looked after that part a bit more carefully. When you open the Olympus branded shoe box that contains your new DS-5000 or DS-5000iD everything inside can be replaced except for the recorder itself. So apart from the recorder what you will find inside are: More
Nuance Australia this week released the Legal vocabulary pack for Australian Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 Professional users. The language pack is available as an add-on, you must have Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 Professional already installed, or you can buy the language pack with DNS 11 Pro as a bundle.
The legal pack is designed specifically for Australian legal users and is crammed full of Australian centric legal terms, just over 200 million words Nuance claim which will help legal users achieve optimal accuracy out of the box when dictating legal terms. More
Dragon Dictate has been available in Australia and worldwide for a couple of weeks now and the flood of people upgrading from MacSpeech Dictate shows just how keen Mac users are for good voice recognition software like Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows. This short post is just a way for me to show you the very basics and the main reason why people buy this software. Simply, speech recognition lets you talk to your Mac and have it transcribe what you say. If you are a slow typist, your hands hurt when you type alot or you think faster than you type then this is the software for you. Take a look:
We are now in the day and age of digital dictation and transcription. But, believe it or not, there are people and organisations out there who are still using some form of cassette tape to record dictation. Olympus long ago discontinued their micro and mini cassette transcription kits (remember the old Pearlcorder brand?) and more recently their hand held tape dictaphones and the tapes bit the dust.
So, what if you do transcription work and you only have digital transcription software, how do you get taped audio into a digital format for you to transcribe? Really it is quite simple as long as you have a device that can play the tape usually the device that made the recording if you have a microcassette or mini cassette. Standard tapes can be played back using a standard tape deck although you have to be careful as some standard cassette recordings can be made in double time which you won’t be able to play on a standard tape deck. As long as that tape player has an earphone or headphone jack you are in luck.
As audio is played back through the earphone jack socket, typically to a headset or earpiece, when you play the tape use that output source and run it into the mic socket on your PC or Mac. To do this you will need a cable which on one end has a male jack plug the correct size to fit the earphone/headphone jack socket on the tape player. On the other end of the cable you will need another male jack plug the correct size to fit the mic socket on your PC or Mac. Don’t worry if the sockets on the tape player and your computer are different sizes, you can get adapters to change the male jack plug size. Once you have the cable all you need is some free audio recording software to record whatever your PC/Mac mic socket can hear as the tape is played back. Once recorded you can save the audio in your favourite digital format; mp3, wma, wav etc.
One thing to watch out for is excessive noise output from the tape playing device. In our experience we have had to reduce the output volume on the player to very low. On the computer I recommend you adjust the mic in volume control to the lowest setting also. Keep an eye on the audio meter levels in the software you choose to record digitally, you will be able to see if the audio in is too much for your sound card. Remember this is taped audio, it will not be as crisp or clear as digital.
Suggested software for recording audio on your computer:
Audacity: Open source, free audio recording software. Allows for audio editing and some effects like noise reduction.
Wavepad: From everyones favourite audio software company NCH Swift Sound. Wavepad comes in a free limited functionality version and a paid full featured package.
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for a cut down, yet still significant price of $US49.99 (AU$51.99). This app is an excellent introduction into voice recognition on the Mac and is essentially a cut down version of Dragon Dictate 2.5 – Nuance’s flagship speech recognition product for the Mac.
