iDictate – Digital Voice Blog

Is there a trial version of the Olympus DSS Player R5 Dictation Module and Transcription Module software? YES THERE IS !! …. read on

Olympus DSS Player Pro r5 software comes in two forms, the dictation module and the transcription module. The Dictation Module software comes as part of the package when you buy the Olympus Professional dictaphones (DS-5000 and DS-3400). The transcription module accompanies the AS-5000 professional transcription kit. More

Voice recognition software is nothing new, it has been around since 1997 on Windows with the well known Dragon NaturallySpeaking software. Nuance the makers of NaturallySpeaking also have a Mac offering in the form of Dragon Dictate which shares the same voice recognition engine known as Dragon. In the following quick video I wanted to just show you Dragon as it is most commonly used, simply to type as you talk.

Perfect for those of you just want to speak your thoughts, maybe writing a blog post, your first novel or a story for publication if you are a journalist. Simply sit back, relax and talk using Dragon – yes there will be mistakes (there is one in the video, did you spot it?) but the key point is you can get your thoughts out without being interrupted or slowed down with your typing speed. Voice recognition, as I mention in the video, is said to be upto five times faster than typing yourself. Couple the speed of transcription with a quick run through proof read and you still have text down much quicker than typing it yourself. More

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 (AU$180+) 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.

So how does it work?

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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.

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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.

Click here to read Annalisa’s guest blog post on the NCH blog.

The Transcription People Pty Ltd is the sister company of Dictate Australia Pty Ltd.

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