using multiple computers with one via voice user
Submitted by Mary Ann on Thu, 12/21/2006 - 20:28.
I am a court reporter. I do my reporting on a laptop using three programs: Via Voice, Eclipse (CAT software), and Speechgate (integrates the two others). My recognition is not good, generally, because I use a mask to speak into. Also, the more files in my Eclipse files (I have heard), the worse the recognition is.
Solution: I have started moving all my uncorrected, unedited files onto my desk top. Correction is easier using a full size keyboard, etc. I do corrections within Eclipse. When I highlight a word, it tells me what I said using Via Voice. Then, if it was recognized incorrectly I retype the correct word. I am not correcting with my voice, only with the keyboard.
My question is: Obviously, I am improving the user that I moved from my laptop to my desktop on my desktop. But I want to improve the user on my laptop. Is there any reason I cannot move the improved user on my desktop back to my laptop? And if that's okay, what is the best way to do this?
Appreciate any help you can give me.
Thanks,
Mary Ann
Mary Ann, There is no
Mary Ann,
There is no difficulty in doing what you want to do.
The easiest way to do it is to use a memory stick (USB flash memory), or alternatively a CD.
On your Desktop, go to C: \ Documents and Settings \ [your user name] \ Application Data \ IBM \ ViaVoice \ Users \ [your user name]. Simply copy that folder and paste it in your memory stick or CD.
Go to your laptop. Copy the folder from your memory stick or CD and paste it into C: \ Documents and Settings \ [your user name] \ Application Data \ IBM \ ViaVoice \ Users \ [your user name]. This will overwrite your previous user.
Needless to say, this can be done in reverse as well.
If you're using a CD, there is one thing you will have to do before you start. Go into C: \ Documents and Settings \ [your user name] \ Application Data \ IBM \ ViaVoice \ Users \ [your user name]. Right-click on the folder, and go down to Properties, and you'll probably find it is marked read-only. Uncheck that, and apply it to all files in the folder. To make sure that this is effective, double click on your folder, right-click on any of the files, go down to Properties and make sure that the read only box is unchecked. It is not, then you will have to go through each file and uncheck the read only box.
Assuming you use the same user name in both desktop and laptop, simply click on ViaVoice. You'll probably get messages saying that the speech recogniser is not recognised. This is because the file client.dfl is locked into the original user. Simply click Yes and OK wherever it appears in the popup's, and ViaVoice will close down. Click on ViaVoice again, and it should come up normally.
As you probably have different audio settings in your laptop and desktop, you should reset up the audio setup.
I presume that you're doing all your corrections using the Correction Window. If you're simply typing the correction in the document, then it has no effect, unless you're speaking it, and the document is analysed when you close it, in which case the analyser will recognise any unrecognised words and invite you to train them. Always make sure that they are the proper case and spelling before training, as otherwise incorrectly spelled words or wrong cases will creep into your vocabulary.
Quentin
Quentin, Thanks so much for
Quentin,
Thanks so much for your help. I really appreciate all the time you take to help everyone out.
Mary Ann
I'll tell you what we've
I'll tell you what we've been doing where I work - mainly because I'm interested to see if we're doing it correctly! We haven't had any problems doing it however, so you shouldn't either.
What we do is, after any correction work, copy the folder with our ViaVoice username (or part username) from Program Files/ViaVoice/Users folder and into the same corresponding folder on any other computer with ViaVoice installed.
I'd just like to point out that the computers we are sharing our profile in this way are identical. I've read that you should be careful using the one user on computers with different hardware. I believe ViaVoice behaves differently depending on what system resources are available and also that different soundcards can have an impact. I guess the easiest answer is to try it and test it for yourself and see if you have any significant recognition anomalies.
You're correct in what
You're correct in what you're doing. Obviously you are using a pre-VV 10 edition. That is why your user file is located in Program Files/ViaVoice/Users folder. (I may be wrong about the VV 10 user location, since I cannot recall whether VV 10 uses Program Files or Documents and Settings for the location of its user files since I now use VV 10.5.)
Because of the different sound cards, and probably microphones, you will have to reset up the audio as I indicated in my earlier posting in this thread.
As regards differing behaviour between computers, this would only the affected by the difference in CPU and memory. I frequently transfer my users between my laptop XP SP2, 1.8 Semperon and 1024 Mb Ram to my desktop Win 2000, 2.8 Celeron and 512 Mb Ram, but the desktop is a little slower than the laptop. This can also be done in reverse. On each change, I have to reset the audio as they have totally different sound cards.
Quentin
Hello everyone I am new to
Hello everyone I am new to this group after not having used ViaVoice for several years when I was using the Millennium Edition. I was a member of the Yahoo ViaVoice group in those days (I remember the name Quentin from then) but it seems entirely taken over by financial advertising now.
I am now using the ViaVoice Pro USB Edition on a new laptop. My question is; can I transfer the Millennium Edition user files over to the laptop and use them with a USB Edition or are the two versions too different for this to work? I see the Millennium Edition in the user's folder has a folder for my user name together with a file called enroll.pos whereas in the USB Edition it is called client.dfl are these compatible?
I hope this is possible as it would save a lot of time by not having to retrain. Any help would be welcome.
Clive.
Clive, yes, this is the same
Clive, yes, this is the same Quentin ( I am the only Quentin using SR) .
Did you update from Millennium to VV 10? If you did, it should have migrated your user.
I cannot say whether or not it will do this, but looking through my own user ADD file, I see words in it that I had trained a number of years ago in VV 8 and/or 9.
I do not think you can simply transfer the Millennium user folder, but you could try it, giving it a different name to the user folder already in VV 10. Then go to Control Panel \ IBM ViaVoice Options, scroll down to the new user name and apply. See if that works.
If it doesn't, an alternative method of training your old words is to open the ADD file in your Millennium user folder using WordPad (not forgetting to uncheck the little box at the bottom), click Edit and Select All, right-click and copy. Then open a word-processing editor such as Microsoft Word, paste it in and save it.
Then using Analyse My Documents, analyse that document and train in the words it doesn't know. This is a bit tedious, but is quicker than analysing a whole load of documents that you probably have not yet put on your new computer.
What type of laptop did you purchase? If is a duo or 2 core duo 2 core duo, I will be very interested to see how you get on speed and accuracy wise.
Quentin
crivon1 wrote: Clive, yes,
Clive, yes, this is the same Quentin ( I am the only Quentin using SR) .
Did you update from Millennium to VV 10? If you did, it should have migrated your user.
What type of laptop did you purchase? If is a duo or 2 core duo 2 core duo, I will be very interested to see how you get on speed and accuracy wise.
Quentin
This is an entirely new install from a CD.
The laptop is a Sony VAIO VGN-FE31H so it is a Core 2 Duo running Windows Media Center and Ubuntu Linux. I have experienced some slowness in ViaVoice and odd things like it not seeming to know where the curser was. I would make a correction in the middle of a sentence and it would appear at the end, our the other way round as if it was remembering where the curser was some time back.
Thanks very much for your help. I cannot get round to trying your tips at the moment but will give an update latter.
Clive.
Clive, I recently
Clive, I recently wrote
....I was setting up a friend's Toshiba 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo laptop, 1024 Gb Ram, WIN XP, and as an experiment I installed Office 97, then VV 10.5 [yes the dead SR programme
], together with my existing voice files and macros, and a Speechmike USB 6274. As I was feeling lazy, I did not disable the windows firewall, but there was no Anti-Virus running. I simply unblocked when the blocking pop up messages appeared.
The speed and accuracy in Word were phenomenal. There was almost instant response on screen and the results were very impressive. It made my 1.8 GHz Semperon seemed like a carthorse in comparison to the Intel Core 2 Duo racehorse!
Of course only time will tell whether it continues like this after the Anti-Virus and all the additional programmes are added.
I have never experienced the problems you have expressed. What word processing program are you dictating to?
What Ram do you you have? It should be not less than 1024 Mb to get optimal results.
It may well be that Windows Media Centre is a resource eater, and this could explain why VV is slow. I am not familiar with that OS.
Quentin
Clive W wrote: The laptop
The laptop is a Sony VAIO VGN-FE31H so it is a Core 2 Duo running Windows Media Center and Ubuntu Linux. I have experienced some slowness in ViaVoice and odd things like it not seeming to know where the curser was. I would make a correction in the middle of a sentence and it would appear at the end, our the other way round as if it was remembering where the curser was some time back.
There is nothing wrong with Microsoft's Windows Media Center. Updated programs run reliably and fast as they do on other versions of Windows XP. The exact same problems you are having with jumping cursor is and instability in general is what caused my company and myself to switch to Dragon NaturallySpeaking to get our work done. We respond to over a hundred e-mail messages a day. We cannot afford to deal with the instability of the program has not seen a new version for five years. An attempt was made to make ViaVoice 10 compatible with the latest versions of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office 2003. Unfortunately, these did not work.
Although Quentin is very happy using 10 year old Microsoft Word 97 and Windows 2000, most people wish to move ahead technologically. There are many new programs that will not work on that combination. Most computer users do not have the luxury of using old programs for various reasons like they are not available or they need new features.
--
Martin Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.
The best microphones for Speech Recognition
See us at: http://www.eMicrophones.com/index.asp
Read, "Key Steps to High Speech Recognition Accuracy" at:
http://www.emicrophones.com/docDetails.asp?DocumentID=38
Quote: Thanks very much for
Thanks very much for your help. I cannot get round to trying your tips at the moment but will give an update latter.
Clive.
Hello Quentin,
I find I shall have to retrain my ViaVoice as I have lost all the setting from the millennium edition. I thought I had a back-up that I could use to restore my macros etc. but unfortunately this is not the case.
I started training my voice using the microphone and headset that came with ViaVoice pro, then I realised that my laptop has a built in microphone so I have now started training this. I realise that the microphone is very important but I find wearing a headset uncomfortable. I am using the laptop microphone now after only a short training session and it is working reasonably well (I am dictating to SpeakPad by the way). I still have this odd problem where the insertion point seems to jump about when I make corrections. I think saying "-move to end of line" might be more reliable then moving the cursor with the mouse.
I will continue training my voice when time becomes available so hopefully the accuracy will improve! I have just had to make a correction part way in the line and used the words "move to end of line" but it inserted the words in the old location so this seems no better. I never had this problem in the Millennium Edition. Things are working much quicker on this laptop machine than on my AMD Athlon though.
Clive
Don't forget to backup as
Don't forget to backup as you go.
Quentin
Here I am replying to my own
Here I am replying to my own post again
Clive,
You do not say if the jumping cursor problem is in Microsoft Word or in some other program, such as Outlook Express. Whilst Martin comments on my use of a 10 year-old programme for word-processing (Word 97), there is nothing wrong with it, it does everything I, and my staff, need, and worked perfectly from Win 98 through to XP. I have never needed the bells and whistles attached to the later versions
There were jumping cursor reported problems with Outlook Express 6, but I never experienced them. In fact I just tried "move to end of line" in Outlook Express, and it worked without any problem. I have also just tried it in Speakpad, and had no problems. I have just done it again in this posting and again with no problems.
I would suggest that you do your training using the headset, as this will give you the consistency of the position of the microphone and ensure accuracy.
Most laptop built-in microphones are not good enough for hands-free dictating, and particularly as you probably have to lean over to be nearer the microphone.
Have a look at Martin, Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc. site at http://www.emicrophones.com/index.asp where you can look at the selection of hands free microphones, and Martin will always advise you accurately. Personally I use a Phillips Speech Mike, and when dictating long documents, I use the Balanced Arm that I bought off him, together with a home-made Speechmike holder that I designed and made, and which you can see at http://www.emicrophones.com/download/Mike_Holder.doc .
Whilst the Speechmike is a little more expensive, it is ideal for people used to dictating into dictating recorders, and has the additional built-in facilities to make life easier. I have the serial connected Speechmike on my desktop, and the USB version with built-in soundcard on my laptop. I have had them now for approximately six years, and I have had no problems with them. (The only problems I have reported on another thread relate to the USB ports.)
Quentin