Speech-to-text software

tom leonard

I've just started a new project where I will have many digitally recorded interviews that I need to convert into text. I understand that the results will be approximate and that I'll have to edit the text to make it accurate.

I wonder if anyone can advise the best software for this? I've seen reviews of the Naturally Speaking software from Dragon. This seems to be very good when you dictate directly into your laptop and it can get familiar with your accent, word-use etc. But I have not seen any comments as to how useful it might be where many different voices would be involved, as with interviews etc.

Has anyone had experience of this and could advise?

Thanks for any help you can give.

aaronpappy

Naturally Speaking software from Dragon is very
good and i would not use a laptop mic.
i would buy a pro mic for best results.

tom leonard

Thanks for that. Have you used it for different voices, where you're dealing with many people? Can it cope with that?

yoyo

tom leonard wrote: »

Thanks for that. Have you used it for different voices, where you're dealing with many people? Can it cope with that?

Most of these programs need to be "trained" for each user voice. Usually this is done by getting you to read aloud paragraphs of text. So there wouldn't be a solution to recognise all types of accent available unless each person is trained into the system

Nick

tom leonard

Thanks, Nick. I understand that all the interviewees would be "untrained" but would it just produce garbage or could something like Naturally Speaking produce a reasonable approximation that I could edit? Even if I had to spend quite a while on each interview, it could still make a big saving if there was a reasonable start point.

fodda

Well all i can say on this is i needed mega stuff put into text and because i am a manual worker with large hands, i am of course a one finger typist with my pc. I can be nothing else because i will always hit 2 or 3 keys at the same time.

I asked around and people recomended me voice recognition software (cant remember the name) so i purchased it and spent many hours laughing and crying at the stupid words it produced. I then upgraded my pc with windows 7 and tried the voice recognition software there which i was told was "excellent". I think i spent more time correcting the strange words that came up even after it had repeatedly typed them correct earlier.

In the end i gave up and used a lady who typed up my stuff from a mini cassette thing i purchased from Argus. She is at www.transcription-services.ie

I wouldnt waste my time with that speech software, it seems they do not get accents, but is great fun after a few drinks for the first couple of times anyway, after that you just want to kill it.

Maybe there is an English and Irish version now but not 18 months back. And another thing i have a big box full of microphones and headsets that i wasted money on also.:rolleyes:

Gary Toolan

Recently installed Dragon v11 for my wife - previously used earlier version about 5 years ago, but she got fed up "training it".
This time it was amazing! She just read about 4 pages A4 text (provided) and accuracy was immediatly up to about 98%! She does all her email and correspondence via this program.
An incredible piece of software - and her pc isn't great (Celeron + 3GB ram) - well worth the investment (about 70 £UK from Amazon)
Gary

Firblog

There are dictaphones available that come with the Dragon software bundled, saw them for less than €100 on amazon..

tom leonard

Thanks for all the input. In the end I bought Dragon v11, which comes with microphone and headset. It's very good and with minimal training it's over 90% accurate from my dictation. There appears to be no software which is able to "translate" multiple voices,as in interviews. Instead, I have to play back the interview and dictate into Dragon, bit by bit. A slow process but still much better than alternatives. And hopefully I'll improve with practice. Thanks again for all the input.

functiondream

Did you buy the home edition or the premium edition of Dragon Naturally speaking.

tom leonard wrote: »

Thanks for all the input. In the end I bought Dragon v11, which comes with microphone and headset. It's very good and with minimal training it's over 90% accurate from my dictation. There appears to be no software which is able to "translate" multiple voices,as in interviews. Instead, I have to play back the interview and dictate into Dragon, bit by bit. A slow process but still much better than alternatives. And hopefully I'll improve with practice. Thanks again for all the input.

tom leonard

I got the Home edition as it was at a very good price on Amazon. The only difference seemed to be that Premium also allows you to upload speech rather than to have to dictate it.

In fact I've made little use of Dragon to date, as I've found it seems to be quicker to play the tape interviews back in bits and type it in. This may be because I've not spent enough time in "training" dragon to my voice but I'm not convinced. Either way it's a slow process!

Hope this helps!

effone

I'm doing an MSc project at the moment and spent hours transcribing the first half of one interview. I was dithering a bit about buying the software, considering the cost and the varying success people have had with it, having read through the many reviews on the web. I bit the bullet and bought a copy this week and I'm delighted I did. The v11.5 Home Edition learns from 4 minutes of your speech and then searches through your mails and saved docs to learn the phrases it needs. I'm listening to the interviews on my phone and speaking them into Dragon. It's worked out great for me, I was very surprised by the words and phrases it was able to transcribe and it's that fast I'm almost saying one sentence while listening to the next. You can of course pay someone to do it, but I reckon I'll have the interviews fresh in my head now for my results section.