Suggestions for speech recognition transcription software?

[jprint714]

Hi,

Does anyone know if there's any kind of Mac app that has speech recognition and can transcribe recordings from audio files (e.g., MP3s). I thought MacSpeech Dictate was capable of doing this, but it doesn't. And I was told that Dragon NaturallySpeaking software can *only* be used w/ a PC.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[burningbright]

I think your only option is running Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred Edition or better on Windows... You could check out the Speech Recognition facilities that are part of Vista and Win7 before splashing out on the application though- they might possibly do it...

I wouldn't recommend MacSpeech anyway- it's vastly more expensive than DNS despite using the same voice recognition tech and having much less functionality, and they pretty much want you to pay for bug fixes! Sadly, they have no OS X competition. I wish Apple would get a licence from Nuance, owners of DNS, and incorporate at least that level of speech recognition in the OS- it's one area where OS X falls embarrassingly short of Windows... Sigh...

 

[old-wiz]

speech recognition software needs to be trained to the individual speaker. I highly doubt you can simply pick up any old mp3 or audio recording and expect any speech software to transcribe it.

 

[burningbright]

you don't need much training at all these days. Never tried mp3 transcription but would imagine it would be much faster to correct the relatively few mistakes than type it all out.

 

[jprint714]

Thanks for your reply. So, as I understand your reply, there's no Mac app that has speech recognition and can transcribe recordings from audio files -- correct? Am very surprised there's no alternative...

 

[burningbright]

Afraid so. SR is so very expensive to develop, so very important for it to deeply impress right away, and (still) so very niche that most companies have long since fallen by the wayside. Nuance (Dragon, MacSpeech) and Windows are the only games in town...

 

[jprint714]

Ok, thanks. Quick questions... As I said, I've heard that Dragon NaturallySpeaking software can *only* be used w/ a PC. But do you know if one can get away w/ using it on a Mac via BootCamp? (I'm using a brand new MacBook Pro, fully loaded, so you'd think that might help!) If so, which Windows software platform would you recommend? If not, do you think I could get away w/ just playing the MP3 files through a speaker and enabling MacSpeech Dictate to dictate them? I'm just not ready to drop hundreds of dollars for a PC just so I can run Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Thanks very much!

 

[burningbright]

DNS only runs on Windows- it doesn't matter who makes the hardware, as long as it can run Windows! Boot camp or virtualisation software like Parallels, VMWare or Virtual Box should be fine. No need to buy another machine! I think DNS is quite RAM-hungry though, so it might be a good idea to assign a good chunk of RAM to Windows if you plan to use lots of Windows apps at the same time.

If you're buying DNS 10 (recommended) then get Windows 7. If you get the 64-bit version of Windows (ok for Macs that have a Core 2 Duo processor or newer, like yours) then make sure you update DNS to 10.1.

As for whether it would work through speakers, it kinda depends on how good your speakers are! Presumably there'd be quite a bit of quality lost though. If you get Windows then see how playing through speakers works with Win 7's speech recognition first- it's often said to be on a rough par with DNS Standard. Make sure you have a decent, noise-cancelling microphone though, like the Logitech desktop USB one.

 

[rgp19699]

Old thread, but there is now software called "Mac Scribe" by Nuance that supposedly allows transcriptions of certain audio files.