In This Chapter

Setting up Dragon Professional Individual for portable recorders

Dictating text and commands on portable recorders

Transcribing voice files

Correcting transcriptions

Thank Alexander Graham Bell. He’s the guy who figured out that you don’t have to be standing there talking to your transcriptionist. Nope. Instead, you can record stuff in the privacy of your own office and hand it off to your transcriptionist later. Of course, in Bell’s day, people had to yell into a big horn and their words were recorded on a wax cylinder. But the idea was a good one: Record now, transcribe later.

The idea was so good that now you can use any number of wonderful gadgets to dictate into while you’re on the go. This chapter deals solely with a voice recorder.

If you want to use Dragon Professional Individual with mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Android, see Chapter 14.

In this chapter, I explain what you need to know about setting up your equipment, speaking into a recorder, and having Dragon Professional Individual transcribe that recording. Also, new to Dragon Professional Individual is the ability to transcribe someone else’s voice recording. This chapter covers that, too.

Why Record?

Perhaps the most attractive benefit of recording first and transcribing later is the same one that Alexander Graham Bell probably had in mind. I suspect that he had no desire to master the manual skill of typing, preferring to let his assistant Watson do that job. Likewise, you can simply dictate your text and then let your assistant (if you’re lucky enough to have one) handle the transcription. That way, you never have to master the intricacies of Dragon Professional Individual itself. You still have to master the intricacies of using a recording device, however.

One of the nice things about recording on a portable recorder is that you can sit there talking into a little box in your hand (a recorder). It doesn’t strain your eyes or cramp your fingers.

The second advantage of recording first and transcribing later is that, surprisingly, it’s often more accurate! Because your recorder provides a digital audio file, Dragon Professional Individual’s transcription doesn’t have to keep up with your rate of speech. It can take its time and read your speech from the file at its own rate. As a result, it will be more accurate.

The disadvantage of recording first and then transcribing is that you don’t get to correct Dragon Professional Individual on the fly. As a result, you may find that you have to make the same correction repeatedly throughout your document. Subsequent documents will, however, benefit from your corrections.

One fantasy to shoot down right now is the one in which you transcribe meetings using your recorder and Dragon Professional Individual. One problem is that Dragon Professional Individual has to be trained to each speaker’s voice. What’s more, the acoustic environment for meetings is invariably far too poor to get a decent recording from even one person. Besides, who really wants everything he said in a meeting to appear in a transcription?!

Setting Up to Use a Portable Recorder

Hopefully, if you already own a portable recorder — it will be good enough to work with Dragon Professional Individual. Nuance lists on its website (http://support.nuance.com/compatibility/default.asp) the categories of recorders that the company has tested with its products, as shown in Figure 11-1. In general, you need a good-quality recorder that outputs digital audio files. For serious remote dictation work, you want a recorder that enables you to store multiple separate recordings. Or do you feel lucky? You can try using your existing recorder and see how well it does.

You can improve the audio quality of some recorders by plugging a separate microphone into them. Look for a microphone jack on your recorder. Of course, a separate microphone often makes the recorder significantly less convenient and portable. “Stub” microphones (microphones on a short stalk) that do not make the recorder too unwieldy exist for this purpose. Check with a good audio equipment supplier.

You have to do a few things before you can make remotely recorded dictation work, including the following:

• You must be able to make a physical connection between your recorder and your PC. You can’t just let the recorder play into the microphone.
• You must install any additional software required by your portable recorder.
• You must train Dragon Professional Individual to recognize your voice the way it sounds after being altered by the processes of recording and transferring to your PC.

Adding a dictation source to your current profile

Most people think their voice sounds pretty terrible after it has been passed through a recorder. So does Dragon Professional Individual. In fact, as far as Dragon Professional Individual is concerned, your voice is so different that it needs to train with the recorder to recognize it.

Just like the first time you used Dragon Professional Individual, you used the New User Wizard to set up Dragon Professional Individual. Additional training of Dragon Professional Individual to understand your recorded voice is just like training it for direct dictation, with one difference: You read the training material into your recorder, transfer the dictation to your PC, and then have Dragon Professional Individual transcribe it.

The process is as follows:

1. Choose Profile ⇒ Manage Dictation Sources, as shown in Figure 11-2.

   A window pops up and you see your current dictation sources.

2. Choose Transcription source from the list as shown in Figure 11-3 and click Select.

   A screen pops up as shown in Figure 11-4 that says, “Choose a sample recording.”

3. Click the Browse to Locate the File button to locate the file on your PC. Find the file and choose it so that it appears in the window as shown in Figure 11-5.

4. Click Next.

   You see a screen as shown in Figure 11-6 that says “Dragon is working on the sample recording.”

5. Click Next.

   A screen comes up as shown in Figure 11-7 that tells you that “Dragon is adapting the transcription source.” (Note that the screen says there are 3 steps that it moves through.)

6. Click Next.

   The training process can take several minutes, so be patient. It is recommended that you don’t touch the computer keyboard or cursor until the training is complete. This gives you the opportunity to take some victory laps to refresh yourself.

   When the training is complete, you see a congratulatory screen, as shown in Figure 11-8 that says “The transcription source is ready!” You can now transcribe your recordings from the DragonBar Tools menu.

7. Click Finish.

Recording Your Dictation

When you record text for Dragon Professional Individual to transcribe, speak that text just as if you were dictating into Dragon Professional Individual directly. Chapter 4 tells you how to do it.

Certain aspects of recording, however, make that process a little different from dictating directly to Dragon Professional Individual. Using commands, for instance, is tricky because you can’t see the transcription in progress. In addition, dictating into a portable recorder introduces some new issues that affect sound quality. The best thing to do is to limit your voice commands to dictation commands.

Because you can’t see the result of Dragon Professional Individual’s transcription as you dictate, using certain commands in recorded speech is risky. Dragon Professional Individual might, for instance, edit or delete the wrong text in response to a command. You wouldn’t know that until you see your text on the screen.

Because of that risk, Dragon Professional Individual ignores most editing commands it encounters while transcribing your recording. Dragon Professional Individual does, however, accept dictation commands in your recorded text — the ones that control capitals and spaces. The safest procedure is to use commands that apply only to your next spoken word, such as “Cap <word>.” Even though Dragon Professional Individual allows you to use the dictation commands that turn something “on,” such as “Caps On,” Dragon Professional Individual may occasionally miss the concluding “Caps Off” or other “Off” command. You may end up making more work for yourself (or whoever does the final cleanup) by using those on/off commands.

Following are some of the commands that, in addition to punctuation, I think work most reliably in recorded speech:

• “All Caps <word>”
• “Cap <word>”
• “New Line”
• “New Paragraph”
• “No Caps <word>”
• “No Space <word>”
• “Spacebar”
• “Tab Key”

You can also use “Scratch That” (which deletes back to the last time you paused) if you make a mistake. Use it only if you’re sure when you last paused, or you’ll delete more or less than you intended! You can repeat the “Scratch That” command to back up through multiple pauses if your memory for pauses is very good.

To avoid having to remember your pauses, a better command for amending recorded dictation is “Resume With <word>.” This command enables you to back up to a specific word within the last 100 characters and then dictate new text beginning from that point. (Of course, it only works if Dragon Professional Individual got your word right in the first place!)

See Chapter 4 for more about “Scratch That” and “Resume With.” Both commands are allowed when you transcribe from a recording. They are called the “restricted command set.”

Transferring Files from a Digital Recorder

When you use your recorder, you need instructions from the manufacturer for transferring audio files to your PC. It may have its own program for handling file transfers that you need to install on your PC. Check your recorder manual for instructions.

Where on your PC’s hard drive should you put the digital audio files from your recorder? You can put them anywhere, If you have a digital recorder but it doesn’t offer digital output or you do not have the necessary cable or software to make a digital transfer, you may be able to make an analog connection instead. See “Figuring out your connection,” earlier in this chapter. Take your recorder to an electronics store and ask for a cable to connect its audio output jack to a PC’s audio line-in jack.

Transcribing Your Recording

Watching Dragon Professional Individual transcribe a recording is somewhat magical. You sit there and your words (or something like them) appear on the screen.

How does it work? Dragon Professional Individual transcribes recorded speech from a sound file (a file with a .wav extension or a WMA, MP3, DSS, M4A, or DS2 format), created by a digital recorder, which you have stored on your PC’s hard drive. (Oh, you haven’t? See “Transferring Files from a Digital Recorder,” earlier in this chapter.)

To transcribe a recording from a portable recorder, Dragon Professional Individual must be set up with a special additional source User Profile specifically trained to handle recorded speech from that recorder. (See the earlier section, “Setting Up to Use a Portable Recorder.”) You don’t need to choose a special user to transcribe files from the Dragon Professional Individual Sound Recorder (assuming the files were created on your PC); use the same user that you use for dictating directly to Dragon Professional Individual.

Launch Dragon Professional Individual if you haven’t already, and take the following steps to transcribe:

1. Click Profile ⇒ Manage Dictation Source and select the Digital Recorder source you previously created.

   The source you created for transcribing from a recorder loads.

   If the microphone in the DragonBar is red, your headset dictation source is loaded. If the microphone is gray with an X, you already have your recorder source open.

   Make sure to change to the recorder source before moving to the next step to avoid negatively impacting your dictation source data, because you sound different when using the recorder.

   If your portable recorder uses the analog (Line-In) connection, Dragon Professional Individual will expect a certain volume from your recorder. When you transcribe text, either make sure the volume is set to the same level you used for training or run the microphone check again at this point. To run the training, choose Audio ⇒ Read Text to Improve Accuracy and choose the Adjust Volume Only selection.

2. In Dragon Professional Individual, choose Tools ⇒ Transcribe Recording as shown in Figure 11-9.

   A “Transcribe a spoken recording” screen opens and asks you to select where Dragon Professional Individual can find the audio file you want to transcribe, as shown in Figure 11-10.

3. Type in the file name or click the Browse to Locate File button to select the file you want to transcribe from your hard drive, as shown in Figure 11-11.

4. Click the Transcribe button.

   The DragonPad begins transcribing. When it’s completed a screen pops up and says your transcription is complete as shown in Figure 11-12.

5. Choose the radio button of the format to which you want to output your transcription.
6. Click Done.

Correcting Your Transcription

It’s kind of exciting to watch as your words print magically on the screen. The hitch comes when you spot errors. Just like regular dictation, you need to proofread and correct your errors.

To proofread, I recommend that you transcribe into the DragonPad or your word processor and use the capability to play back your own voice if you are unsure about what you actually said. Here’s a method you can use:

1. Begin reading your text. If you spot an error, you can say, “Select <text>” and then, “Correct That.”

   The Correction menu pops up just as it does for your regular dictation. Choose the correct number of the correct version or say, “Spell That” and correct it that way.

2. Use Playback when you spot an error by selecting the incorrect passage and right-clicking. Choose Play That Back from the list of options, as shown in Figure 11-13.

   You can alternate methods until you have corrected the entire transcription.

Correct Dragon’s mistakes, not yours. If you hear yourself say something incorrect and Dragon Professional Individual transcribes it, just go over it and correct it. Dragon didn’t make a mistake, so it doesn’t need to be corrected. (Yes, this is an operator error, not a software error! And for the record, it happens to the best of us!)

Are you lucky enough to have a staff member or other willing participant who will transcribe your recording for you? Make sure that individual transfers your User Profile to his PC before he begins. If he doesn’t have your User Profile on his computer, the audio won’t be recognized properly. (Of course, your faithful human transcriber also has to own Dragon Professional Individual software to hear your voice when playing it back.)

Transcribing Someone Else’s Voice Recording

A great new feature in Dragon Professional Individual is the ability to transcribe a recording of someone else’s voice. This is something that many users have been waiting for, and now it’s here.

Imagine that you attend a training session and record the trainer’s voice. You can take that recording and let Dragon Professional Individual transcribe it for you. That’s very nice of your Dragon assistant to do the extra work!

Here’s how to do it:

1. In Dragon Professional Individual, click Profile ⇒ New User Profile on the DragonBar and click the New button.

   Type in a name for that profile.

2. Click Next and choose your speech options.

   A screen pops up, and you are asked to select your region and your accent from the drop-down boxes, as shown in Figure 11-14.

3. Click Next.

   You are asked to choose an audio device, as shown in Figure 11-15.

4. Choose Transcription source as the audio device and click Next.

   A screen pops up and asks you to choose a sample recording, as shown in Figure 11-16. Type in or browse to the location and filename of the recording.

5. Click Next.

   Wait for the transcription sample to be completed. A dialog box pops up, showing you the results. Make corrections if necessary.

6. Click Next.

   Wait for the configuration to be completed.

7. Click Finish.