Olympus Release Dictation iOS App But Is There More To Come?

This post is a short one. I suspect there is more coming for this new app so will hold off doing a full review until the complete picture is known.

Olympus audio department have finally taken the plunge into the iOS app store (iPhone only) releasing the Olympus Dictation voice recording app { iTunes link }. The app looks great and mimics the colours of Apple’s own Voice Memos so will instantly feel comfortable to most users. The app as you would expect has dictaphone type functionality as in it can insert and overwrite audio. Some nice additions are VCVA (variable control voice actuator) or voice activation triggered by noise of various levels and seen in all Olympus digital voice recorders. Also the ability to link to bluetooth microphones so you can use high quality mics for your recordings, particularly relevant for those using Dragon to transcribe their audio files.

But, there are some anomalies with this little app which is why I suspect that there is more to come.

Audio in the app is recorded in .m4a format

The interesting thing here is that the Olympus software, ODMS (Olympus Dictation Management System) for Windows and DSS PLayer Plus v7 for Mac do not accept that audio format …. yet !

The ability to tag audio with your Author ID and Workflow type

This currently exists in other apps like Hugo Dictation but typically emailed audio is accompanied by a .xml file holding the meta data for the audio file, not so with this app, unless it will be turned on at a later date or somehow embedded as metadata in the .m4a audio itself. If it is embedded then again holds weight for a software update release to recognise this data.

FlashAir memory card support

I like this one. People are very comfortable using their digital dictaphones in their office where it is is easy to dock the recorder and send the audio. But often dictators want to take their recorders with them, perhaps to court if you are legal or home visits if you are in the medical world, and still be able to send the audio back to the practice. Sure you can take your mobile broadband dongle and laptop with you but it is painful. The FlashAir cards Olympus have been using successfully in their amazing cameras to allow instant sharing of images so it doesn’t take muck of a leap to assume that FlashAir may soon be working with your DS-7000 Pro dictaphone to allow you to sync recorded audio with your Olympus Dictation app and use the app to send the audio back to base. We will see if this prediction holds up, but I hope so.

My wish list

Finally on the list of things I hope/think will happen in the coming weeks, a revamp of the Mac Olympus dictation and transcription software, DSS Player Plus v7. It is looking very old and tired and is desperate for some of the functionality that Windows users enjoy with ODMS, like auto sending of audio and perhaps even auto transcription using Dragon Dictate for Mac. Interesting that Olympus chose the .m4a audio format for recording, this is one of the audio formats compatible with Dragon Dictate 3 for Mac’s transcription feature. Let’s hope I am right with this prediction 🙂

Australia Only?

So far I have only seen the app in the Australian iTunes store, it is not in the US, Canadian or UK app store. This could mean anything, maybe the Apple review process is quicker for Australian apps, maybe Australia is the test bed for the app or maybe this is an Australian lead initiative from Olympus.

I expect a press release from Olympus in the coming weeks on the above, as soon as the detail is out I will post some reviews and how-to’s on using the new Olympus Dictation app along with ODMS dictation and transcription modules for Windows and DSS Player Plus v7 for Mac.