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

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.

If you are an Express Scribe user on Apple Mac then i’m afraid the following information is not for you. The Philips USB foot controls are only compatible with the Windows version of Express Scribe.

This is where the Philips USB transcription foot controls come in. Having recently gone through a make over they have been transformed from the older ugly square brick look of foot pedal (like the LFH6212 to the left) into a more ergonomic, sleek modern look with a couple of layout options in the Philips 2310 (LFH2310/00) and Philips 2320 (LFH2320/00) models. 

Both the Philips 2310 and 2320 come with three foot pedals. The middle pedal is long, thin and along the top on the 2310 model whereas the 2320′s middle pedal takes up a larger middle area. The pedals are supplied with a Philips driver disk however this is not required, they are pure plug and play pedals and can be setup in around one minute. 

Once your USB foot pedal has been connected and recognised by your computer fire up Express Scribe and find your way to the Control tab inside Playback Settings. Tick the ‘Use foot pedal playback control‘ and leave the default Port and Number of pedals settings as ‘GamePort 1 or USBGame 1‘ and ‘3-Pedals‘.

With Express Scribe you can configure any pedal combination. Lets say you like the left pedal to be ‘play’, the right pedal to be ‘rewind’ and the middle pedal to be ‘forward’, easy. Simply click on the ‘Foot Pedal Control Setup Wizard‘ and you are asked which pedal you prefer for each audio function, rewind/play/forward. Finally the tick box ‘Quick tap on play pedal locks play on‘ lets you decide if you want to just tap the play pedal to start audio playback or if you prefer to hold the pedal down for audio playback. Using the combination of Express Scribe and the Philips USB Foot Controls you have full, easy configuration of your foot pedal set up.

Sure, the price of the Philips pedals (RRP AU$179) are quite a bit more than the pedals sold by NCH via the AltoEdge website like the VEC, but in my opinion you do get what you pay for. Coming from Philips who is a big player in the digital dictation and transcription world, their USB foot pedal is solid and responsive. As they come from Philips Dictation Australia they are also covered by an Australian warranty.

Our sister company, The Transcription People use and recommend the Philips 2310 and 2320 USB foot controls for transcription with Express Scribe.

For more information about the Philips USB transcription foot controls please visit the Dictate Australia website.

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.

This is where transcription software can and does help. Both Olympus and Philips have their professional transcription kits for people who do this kind of thing day in and day out, but for your average person who has an occassional need to transcribe some audio you need to look at Express Scribe from NCH Swift Sound.

Express Scribe from NCH

NCH is an Aussie company based down in Canberra. They have been around for a fair few years and I have watched them grow over time from quite a small outfit to the giant in the digital audio software world, not just in Australia but all over the World.

What do I like about Express Scribe? It’s price and it’s functionality. The price can’t be argued with its $0. It’s functionality is certainly not lacking. Included in the software is variable playback speed, auto file loading from network or email and background noise reduction or extra volume boost for those not so well recorded audio files.

Express Scribe is available for both Windows and Mac. The Mac version supports alot less audio file formats than the Windows version which covers just about anything you can throw at it, except at the time of writing this post, the new DSS Pro (.ds2) audio format.

So how does it work? You take your audio file (from a digital voice recorder, from your email, downloaded from the web etc) and load it into Scribe (much like putting a tape in the palyer in the old days). Once loaded and ready to play you flip to your Word document and using the configured playback keys (or USB foot control) you play/stop/rewind your audio while typing your notes from it without leaving the Word document. Trust me, this saves a mountain of time.

Express Scribe does have an area where you can type called the Typepad but in my opinion better to type directly into Word or whatever word processing software you use to get the benefits of spell checker real time.

Setting playback control. With Express Scribe you have the option to use any keys on the keyboard for stop/play/rewind (and a load of other audio manipulation functions) or a USB foot pedal like the cheap and nasty VEC’s or the more classy three pedal Philips 2310/2320 and four pedal 2330. By default Express Scribe comes pre-configured with a number of F (function keys) to perform various tasks like stop/play/rewind. You can either go with these presets or you can set your own. In this screen shot you will see I have set my arrow/cursor keys to take on the stop/play/rewind function. Just about any keys and any key combinations can be used.

Express Scribe - Setting Playback Control Keys

Selecting audio file types. As I mentioned above the Windows version of Scribe can take a multitude of varying audio file formats, here is the latest list from the NCH website:

Express Scribe on Windows:-

wav, mp3, dct (encrypted dictation), ra and rm (RealAudio), sri (VoiceIt), dss (Olympus, Lanier and Grundig), au, aif, msv, dvf, mp2, vox, compressed wav (including PCM, uLaw, ALaw, ADPCM, CELP, SBC, Windows Media, DSP TrueSpeech, GSM 6.10), Philips Digital Recorder format, Sanyo Digital Recorder format and more.  Please note that DSP TrueSpeech is not currently supported on Vista.

Express Scribe on Intel Mac:-

wav, mp3, aiff and dct file formats.

Windows people be warned, although the software can take all those formats they are not “on” by default. You will need to check the tick box list of audio files to make sure the file type you want to transcribe is ticked. Obviously the more common audio formats are on by default but many are not. Settings -> File Types is where you will find the audio file list.

Sony DVF files. To play audio files from Sony digital voice recorders which produce .dvf files you will need to download and install an additional plugin from Sony. This is quick and easy to do and I recommend a reboot after install. The Sony plugin can be downloaded from here.

You can download the Windows version of Express Scribe from us here at Dictate Australia. We don’t get a commission or anything for the download, remember it’s free software, I just got tired of sending people daily to the NCH website so I had them brand a version for Dictate. Click the NCH logo and box to be taken to the download page.

A word of caution when installing. As this is free software NCH try to take install time as an opportunity to dump other software onto your PC. Personally I am not a fan of this and prefer the in application advertising method which is much less intrusive. Nonetheless, a tip for you. During the install process you will be given the opportunity to install other “recommended” software which can be selected via tick boxes. Do not tick any of the boxes, you only need Express Scribe and nothing else.

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.