iDictate – Digital Voice Blog

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.

NCH Software recently outed a new release of the worlds most popular free transcription software for Windows, Express Scribe, which is finally compatible with DSS Pro audio file formats, better known as .ds2 files. Not only that but NCH claims that Express Scribe is compatible with both Phillips DSS Pro and Olympus DSS Pro audio files (yes there is a difference even though DSS Pro is supposed to be a standard).

From Olympus the DSS Pro (.ds2) audio files are created on their Pro range of digital dictaphones (DS-5000, DS-3400 and DS-2400) and has caused some issues for many small outsource transcription businesses who were aggrieved to actually spend money and buy the appropriate software to either play or convert these audio files to load into pre version 5.30 Express Scribe. How to convert .ds2 audio files to play in Express Scribe has been covered in an earlier blog post of ours (one of our most popular posts) – click here

Great move by NCH although it did take some time to get there, the rejoicing from the transcription world will be huge. Easily one of the best if not the best transcription software out there, Express Scribe continues to dominate the transcription world and rightly so. Come on NCH, let us pay for this software

As yet .ds2 can only be played by Express Scribe on Windows. The Mac version (as of version 5.32) remains without .ds2 support.

Click here to keep an eye on Express Scribe versions – both Mac and Windows

Click here to download a sample Olympus .ds2 audio file to test your Express Scribe

In the dark and mysterious world of transcription, well not really dark and mysterious just needed to make it a little more exciting than it really is, the most common software used by transcription typists is Express Scribe from NCH SwiftSound. This is great software for two key reasons, 1) it is free $0 2) it is Australian made, NCH Swift Sound are an Australia company based in Canberra.

Primarily because of key reason 1 above this makes it very popular with the army of Virtual Assistants (VAs) around the world who like to include transcription in their portfolio of services offered. Sure on its own Scribe works really well and for some, especially those with no transcription experience, having no footpedal is not a big deal. But for the serious transcriptionist or for people converting from analogue transcription kits (ahh those trusty Pearlcorders), a good reliable foot pedal is a must.

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I love my job. One of the main reasons for that statement is that I get to speak to broad range of people from all walks of life all across Australia daily. One minute it might be a family member in the bush who wants to record a grandparent telling stories of their life for future family generations to hear and for them to transcibe into a family history record. Next minute it might be a journalist in Melbourne looking for the best voice recorder to grab quick, clear soundbites of someone in the news ready for them to quote in a story later that day.

One thing most people who buy a digital voice recorder have in common is the need to listen to the audio while typing up notes or a verbatum account of the audio. For those who are not in the know, this usually involves playing the audio back through Windows Media Player or QuickTime flicking quickly to Word to type a few words then flicking back to the audio player to stop and rewind so you can hear the last sentence or two again. This in itself will very quickly become tedious and a truely painful experience.

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“Help” is a comment we have had a few times since the mac daddy of the Olympus digital voice recorder range, the DS-5000 and DS-5000iD was launched late 2008. This new Olympus digital dicataphone, which replaced the sturdy DS-4000, uses the latest DSS (Digital Speech Standard) audio technology known as DSS Pro which produces digital audio files with the extension .ds2

The previous audio format used by its predecessor the Olympus DS-4000 produced audio files with the extension .dss, this audio format was shared between a few of the leading digital voice manufacturers like Olympus and Philips and had been around for a while. Third party voice developers like the Australian NCH company had developed software which could easily play that audio format on a PC and so they and others created software which could use that format. Of note was their highly popular free digital transcription software called Express Scribe.

What we have found lately is the users of the DS-5000 recorders who are utilising the smaller outsource transcription companies are having issues as Express Scribe and other free transcription software is not able to play the DSS Pro .ds2 audio files. Of course for the larger Australian outsource transcription businesses like our sister company The Transcription People this is not an issue.

No need to panic, there is a way around this. Although the DS-5000 by default records in DSS Pro it can be changed to record in the older DSS .dss format, this is called Classic Mode. Setting the DS-5000 to Classic Mode is done via the DSS Pro Dictation Module software and not on the recorder itself. I spent plenty of time trawling through the onboard menus on my DS-5000iD before I did the sensible thing and read the manual!

If you are using a smaller outsource transcription business or your in house typing team uses the older Olympus transcription kits then I would suggest you switch your DS-5000 to classic mode until such time as they have updated their software to the DSS Pro transcription module or purchased a new Olympus AS-5000 digital transcription kit.