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ViaVoice Pro & Vista
Submitted by Englishem on Fri, 08/24/2007 - 20:36.
Help! I am a steno student about to begin voice writing training on ViaVoice Pro USB10. Now, I know it isn't supposed to work with Vista, but I heard that it was possible to make it work, and even found instructions on AudioScribe's website. So I got a new laptop with Vista, and was able to get it installed to the point of reading the practice story so it could start learning my voice. It said I was ready to go. Then whenever I tried to go any further, I couldn't get into anything, and all that showed up in the program were the installation files. I tried to uninstall and then reinstall. It gets as far as "setting up installation files" at 99 percent, then hangs up. Is there any hope for installing VV on Vista? I've read other discussions but all are several months old, so I'm hoping someone has figured it out. Thanks for any help!!
I have a thing about
I have a thing about avoiding any software whose name begins with the letter "V", so I'm not much help. Frankly, I don't know anyone who has been able to get VV working on Vista, and some people who should know say it can't work.
Maybe the Audioscribe cite could provide some feedback.
One possibility you might try, not so much because I expect it would work as that it would keep you busy:-), is to install it on an XP machine and then try upgrading that OS to Vista, but that probably won't work either.
So... I would think your best course of action is to get rid of one or more pieces of software whose name begins with a "V", i.e., backgrade to XP and/or upgrade to DNS.
Sorry and good luck! If you make any headway, please let us know.
Bruce
PS: Doesn't Vista come with a full-blown SR product? If so, why not give it a spin? If you need help finding how to access it, post a new query.
Thanks for the input. Yes,
Thanks for the input. Yes, I found the voice recognition program on my new laptop, and it works very similar to VV, so I might see if that will work. I also heard that VV might work with Vista if you have the student version of Eclipse. I'm waiting on more details on that from someone at Eclipse, but it's sounding more and more like I just bought myself a really expensive new toy...
P.S. DNS won't work for realtime voice writing because it doesn't show up word for word, it waits and drops a block of text at a time (at least that's what I've been told).
While I don't know what
While I don't know what realtime voice writing means (although I would like to find out), I do know both DNS and MS SR (the precursor to Vista SR) are superb tools for real writing. One reason why they drop blocks of text at a time is that they look at longer stretches of text to improve accuracy, which is generally a higher priority with most writers. But in your case speed might be more important than accuracy. Whether VV is faster than the more modern products is moot -- I've never run comparative tests.
Again, good luck!
Bruce
One reason why they drop
One reason why they drop blocks of text at a time is that they look at longer stretches of text to improve accuracy
only if people dictate them! If I dictate (as I did to check this out) 'The Attorney General', DNS does not hang around waiting for more text so it can work out whether I really meant to say that, it types it. (I suspect it reads the news
)
Judy
Wrong, enlishem -- not your
Wrong, enlishem -- not your fault, you've been misinformed -- DNS 'drops' what people dictate into it, utterance by utterance. It waits until the end of an utterance, certainly, but that can be a word or a sentence/paragraph. When I used VV, it worked in the same way, so far as that was concerned.
Judy
Judy, I am presently using,
Judy,
I am presently using, as an experiment, DNS 9.5 Preferredto see how fast it works dictating into Word when I put up one wordas against a phrase or paragraph.it is definitely much slower than VV. What you are seeing now is exactly as I dictated it, and I paused after the word "Preferred"on the first line and "word" as it appears on the second line. You will note that the word "to" is joined to " Preferred" and "word" is joined to "as". You will also note that the second sentence starts with a small case and without a space after the "dot".
I also note that the select and say does not work, since when I tried to correct one particular word comes up with the message "cannot find any matching text".
Maybe if I had the time and took the trouble, I can fix these problems(I just tried to correct the word "can "where I dictated "could"but the correction window simply refused to come up, and the message box states "Dictating to a nonstandard window").
I'm going back to VV!
Quentin
Hello Quentin You will note
Hello Quentin
You will note that the word "to" is joined to " Preferred" and "word" is joined to "as"
Yes. I thought I'd dictate this to see what happens if I dictate into this box in a series of minute utterances. That last sentence was dictated in about eight utterances (I didn't actually count them). I can't check your Word problem because I haven't got Word installed on my computer, but I suspect you've simply lost Select-and-Say (that's easily remedied); as you'll see from this, in a prima facie more difficult dictating environment than Word, NaturallySpeaking spaced everything correctly (what you can't see is that 'Correct That' worked!).
As you know, I don't sell voice software, I have no interest in selling it, I only have an interest in people getting the right equipment for their work. In this instance, I feel that some people have been misinformed about Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which has behaved more or less perfectly throughout my not particularly careful dictation of this reply, dictated partly choppily, partly in long phrases.
(Back to typing -- which is harder!) NaturallySpeaking could easily be used for captioning, IMO, and, it appears, is. If people prefer VV, fine. It's cheaper. And by the time Vista becomes stable, perhaps VV will work with it. (Perhaps it does now i.e. perhaps device drivers are the real problem, though englishem's first post suggests not.) But, perhaps not. And anyway someone might have DNS and want/need to use it for real time work; they should not be put off by dogmatic untrue statements to the effect that NaturallySpeaking only 'works' with sentences and paragraphs. (Just to make my point 100 per cent clear: each of the eight or so components of the sentence I singled out above was typed as soon as I dictated it, after each 1-3 word 'utterance'.)
Judy
Judy, People using speech
Judy,
People using speech recognition for captioning and CART are pushing the limits of the intended use of SREs. They're dictating at 200 words per minute and above, in a non-controlled environment. And TV stations and captioning companies have standards whereby the words have to appear on the screen within X number of seconds of being spoken. The people I've spoken to who have been successful voice writing captioners and CART providers all say unequivocally that Dragon doesn't meet the standards. Also, the SRE isn't being used alone. It's used in conjunction with CAT - Computer Aided Transcription - software, which provides additional essential functions, so the speech input goes first through the SRE, and then what the SRE produces goes through the CAT software before the words appear on the screen.
Floridagal, I hadn't seen
Floridagal, I hadn't seen this when I replied to you in your new thread -- sorry.
The people I've spoken to who have been successful voice writing captioners and CART providers all say unequivocally that Dragon doesn't meet the standards.
VV is faster, certainly, simply because it has lesser system requirements. I agree 'streaming' would also tend to make it faster. But your second point is IMO the important one:
Also, the SRE isn't being used alone. It's used in conjunction with CAT - Computer Aided Transcription - software, which provides additional essential functions, so the speech input goes first through the SRE, and then what the SRE produces goes through the CAT software before the words appear on the screen.
I realised there was other software involved, and I see that ProCAT only works with VV.
Now (and this is why I got involved in the thread, I really do almost always avoid such threads like the plague) what if VV stops being developed? 'Outdated', well, whatever: I use 'outdated' software all the time, I haven't got the money to update; but I sense there will come a point when VV will simply be unusable. (I know I could be wrong.) People using it need to know that NaturallySpeaking is not a program that can only deal in large chunks of text (I add that I blame NaturallySpeaking's 'fans' for this misconception, they really do try to push everybody into dictating lengthy passages...., I'm sure the miconception doesn't come, in fact, from proponents of VV).
Thanks for the explanation
Judy
From all the information I
From all the information I can gather, the probability is that , yes, there will come a time when VV is no longer an option. If it isn't updated to work with new operating systems...well, XP won't be available forever.
My bet is that the CAT companies will be instrumental in an alternative, whether it be a new product or a different iteration of Dragon. The CAT companies - four in total, with three of the four having provided steno CAT for a long time - have spent a boatload of money developing software for voice writers. I've been a steno machine writer for three decades, used the first CAT system available back in '78, and I've seen CAT software vendors come and go, but the biggies practically kill themselves trying to outdo each other. It wouldn't be good for business to let this market down.
FWIW, though, it's the voice writers in the field, those pioneers who have been the first successful voice writers to provide captioning and CART, who insist on VV over Dragon for that application, not the vendors.
In the legal arena, Dragon is preferred. But that's for voice writer court reporters who realtime for themselves (making transcript production much shorter) or who provide a realtime feed to judges and attorneys, who use the text to rule on objections or formulate their next question. They rarely read it as it's being "written."
My bet is that the CAT
My bet is that the CAT companies will be instrumental in an alternative,
Yes. An iteration of Dragon would, if VV goes, probably be best
Judy
Judy, Now that I'm up to
Judy,
Now that I'm up to speed on what realtime writing is, maybe we should welcome those folks and invite them to discuss any technical issues they might have with whatever SR product they might be using that don't get solved on their other forums. Obviously we're on the cutting edge of comparative SR value discussions
Bruce
If you want to speed up
If you want to speed up NaturallySpeaking's dictation move the Speed Versus Accuracy (under the Options/Miscellaneous Tab) all of the way to the left for fastest response. ViaVoice will probably still perform faster because it's a notably lighter program (almost like comparing WordPad to Microsoft Word).
Preventing the words from bumping up against one another is also easy to prevent if you are actually interested in solving the problem rather than looking for an excuse to promote ViaVoice. All you have to do is re-enable NaturallySpeaking's Select-and-Say plug-in for Microsoft Word. A step-by-step is available in our Quick Tips by looking up "What to Do When You Lose Select-&-Say in Microsoft Word".
Lunis Orcutt - Developer of KnowBrainer (DNS Command Software)
A Nuance Gold Certified Endorsed Vendor
Although ViaVoice is still
Although ViaVoice is still manufactured, development was discontinued several years ago, no future development is planned and that is the main reason why it will never work in Vista. You might consider upgrading to Preferred 9.5 because the price is only $49 after manufacturer rebate which expires on September 1.
As others on this forum have recommended, the Vista speech engine is also highly accurate and there is a high probability that it's development will continue (unlike ViaVoice which is slated to be discontinued) but keep in mind that the Vista speech engine is still in its infancy and it doesn't even have a Command Browser.
Lunis Orcutt - Developer of KnowBrainer (DNS Command Software)
A Nuance Gold Certified Endorsed Vendor
The reason this poster
The reason this poster cannot "upgrade" to DNS is because s/he is learning to write realtime using speech recognition. What this means is voicewriting live for the purposes of court reporting or, most likely, captioning and CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation). The deaf and hearing impaired community does not benefit from blocks of text being dropped at once. Have you ever seen captions on TV where they come up a paragraph at a time? They don't, because the deaf (and hearing!) can't handle huge chunks of text at once.
I am a ViaVoice/Eclipse captioner and fortunately have not had the "pleasure" of using Vista yet, but I am researching for a colleague as to what a solution might be for her.
Just thought I'd drop my $0.02 on the table.
Stacy B
First, NaturallySpeaking
First, NaturallySpeaking (which works with Eclipse) doesn't produce a paragraph of text at a time unless the user dictates that way (I dictate in phrases/sentences). Second, I'm told Vista's speech engine is really very good. So if VV will not install on Vista and Vista has to be used, NaturallySpeaking or Vista are obvious solutions.
Judy
Thank you for telling us
Thank you for telling us what realtime writing means -- one can guess in general but the exact context is important.
Hope you feel you got your money's worth!
Bruce
Stacy, did you find it hard
Stacy, did you find it hard to get into captioning as a voice writer? That is the direction I want to go, but I hear it is still difficult to get into.
Englishem, You might want to
Englishem,
You might want to check out the Compuserve court reporter's forum (do a google for it if you've never been there). Adria from Audioscribe pops in once in a while to answer questions and they also have a folder devoted specifically to Eclipse users with a couple of Eclipse representatives who will answer your questions. They also have a folder devoted specifically to voice writers. I believe that Adria with Audioscribe did announce a while back that Vista with Eclipse/SpeechGate is compatible if you are using your computer's sound card. I think one of the problems has been getting drivers for the USB pods that we use to work with Vista. But that really doesn't sound like your problem. Did you turn off your firewall and anti-virus before loading it? It's worth a try.
It sounds like you have the student version of Eclipse. If they have customer support for students, that might be your best bet; otherwise, post your question to the Eclipse folder on the Compuserve forum and you should get an answer.
I personally have never used Dragon since my court reporting software (ProCAT) currently only will allow the use of ViaVoice. I do know of somebody, though, that is using Dragon with Audioscribe and she doesn't have a problem with the drop down. If you aren't going into CART or captioning, you might want to consider trying Dragon or, if possible, having Windows XP loaded onto your Vista machine.
Good luck.
Cheryl
On the MS Speech Group
On the MS Speech Group (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ms-speech/messa...), there seems to be strong views that Vista is still not acceptable as an OS system in view of its incompatibility with so many older programs. There has been a recommendation that one should substitute XP for Vista on a new computer, as Vista does not appear to offer any real advantage to the average user. As one of the early beta testers, I saw no advantage over XP.
As regards realtime voice writing, with a fast CPU (in other words those that come with all current computers), XP and 1 Gb Ram, ViaVoice will put the words on the screen as fast you speak them, and not as blocks of text as in DNS. In other words you do not have to wait until the end of an utterance, such as a paragraph or sentence, before it appears on screen. It will appear word by word as you dictate. Most recently, I have compared the speed of VV in my 1.8 Gb Semperon laptop against 2 Gb Intel Pentium 4, and on the latter, the words simply raced across the screen as fast as I could speak them. The same happened with a 1.6 Gb Intel Core 2 Duo laptop that I was setting up for a friend.
I have also noted VV in my Semperon works much quicker when I disable my firewall and anti-virus and go off-line.
Quentin
Quentin
an utterance, such as a
an utterance, such as a paragraph or sentence
An utterance, Quentin, can be as brief as a word. (I often dictate choppily, I don't compose/memorise/dictate, I compose straight onto the screen. No problem.)
I normally stay out of VV versus DNS threads but do want to make sure englishem is not misinformed on this point.
Judy
I want to thank everyone who
I want to thank everyone who responded to my dilemma. I finally accepted that I won't be able to use VV with Vista, at least not in the foreseeable future, so I returned the laptop to Circuit City. I had to pay a restocking fee, so it's been a slightly expensive lesson to learn (but not the worst mistake I've ever made). I installed VV on my desktop PC which has XP with no problems and it works great, so I'm fine until I get through my training. By then I'll probably never find a laptop with XP on it. The guy at Circuit City said you can still special order them through Dell or HP, although those aren't brands I was interested in.
Anyway, thanks again for all the feedback!
P.S. Falcon Northwest is
P.S. Falcon Northwest is supposed to be selling laptops with XP "well into 2008."
I ordered my Lenovo in the beginning of July and it came in three weeks. I paid around $1600 and it has a 2.2GHz processor, 100 GB 7200 rpm hard drive (I transfer everything to my desktop for editing, so I didn't need a huge hard drive and wanted the faster one), 2 gigs of RAM upgradeable to 4. I chose the least expensive graphics since I'm only displaying text and not photos or presentations. It's the T61 model. Great audio if you'll be reporting and recording the room audio as well. I got the 14.1 inch screen and it's a lot larger than I imagined because it's wide screen. Anything bigger would be a beast to lug around.
Thanks for reminding me
Thanks for reminding me about that, I had seen that before. That's more than I can spend right now, but I will probably do that when I get ready to go to work.
If you choose to purchase a
If you choose to purchase a computer over the counter at places like Circuit City, Best Buy, CompUSA, Costco, Wal-Mart etc. your only choice will probably be Windows Vista but nearly all mail-order companies typically offer Windows XP as an option. At one point, Dell was refusing to sell Windows XP but when they lost a significant amount of business, they changed their attitude. Most professionals are recommending Windows XP at this time and so will we at least until Microsoft releases SR1.
Lunis Orcutt - Developer of KnowBrainer (DNS Command Software)
A Nuance Gold Certified Endorsed Vendor
One of the things that has
One of the things that has been suggested is that you should partition your hard disk, leaving Vista in your C drive.
Then make an image of your Vista OS system, and store it away somewhere safely.
You could then format the C drive, and install Win XP. It should work.
If, however, it does not work, you can always restore the Vista OS system from the image.
I have never tried this, but I intend to do so next time I get a laptop which has Vista installed.
As you will see from other postings, there are manufacturers who are installing XP instead of Vista in new computers.
I purchased an HP laptop from Circuit City about five years ago, and never had one minutes trouble with it. When I upgraded it because it was too slow and only 20 Gb hard disk, I gave it to my wife who is still using it.
Quentin
Englishem, I've been a steno
Englishem, I've been a steno reporter for three decades, and I'm in the process of cross-training to voice writing due to repetitive stress injuries. You can still get a laptop with XP. Last month I purchased an IBM Thinkpad with XP, and it exceeds the optimum specs for voice writing with my CAT software (Stenograph's CaseCAT with CATalyst VP added so I can use both methods). Falcon Northwest also sells laptops with XP. Go to Lenovo.com or falcon-nw.com. Falcon is the best you can get for voice writing, but the Lenovo was half the price. If you decide to get the Lenovo, post here so I can give you instructions on how to install ViaVoice on it. You have to disable the security chip and other things for it to install as it reboots during installation.
Thank you! I will keep this
Thank you! I will keep this on file for when I am ready. I hope to get through the training in just a few months. I've been in steno school for almost 3 years and simply can't afford to stick it out any longer, but I feel that voice writing is the way to go for me now.
Where are you getting your
Where are you getting your training? I'm doing it on my own using all the available reference books. And I understand your frustration with steno school. When the schools started pushing realtime from the start and stressing realtime accuracy over speed, a lot of folks ended up in your position. Don't get me wrong, it was difficult before that, but the realtime frenzy made it worse.
Englishem, as you propose to
Englishem, as you propose to keep this thread for when you change computers, you will have to transfer your voice files and any macros that you make to the new computer.
The simplest way is to do the following:-
With Windows Explorer or My Computer, copy your named user folder from your old PC using a CD or Memory Stick.
On your old PC, export your navigation and dictation macros to CD or Memory Stick.
Install ViaVoice in your new computer. Do not start up after installation. Reboot the computer.
Insert the CD or Memory Stick in the new computer. Copy the user folder and paste it in the ViaVoice \ Users folder.
(You do not say whether you have VV 10 or VV 10.5. In VV 10, the user folder will be in C: \ Program Files \ ViaVoice\ Users. In VV 10.5, it will be in C: \ Documents and Settings \ [named] User \ Application Data \ IBM \ ViaVoice \ Users.)
Then go to Start \ Settings \ Control Panel \ IBM ViaVoice Options. Click on the arrow at the right hand side of the top pane, and locate your name user and click Apply at the bottom of the window.
Click on the tabs to complete all the rest of the settings.
Open ViaVoice. You may find it will come up with popup windows telling you that speech recogniser cannot recognise the speech files, and other messages. Just simply click OK on each them until they all disappear. Then open ViaVoice again and it should come up with your user name.
Go to audio set up and set up your microphone in the usual way.
Import your dictation and navigation macros from CD or Memory Stick.
You should now be in business.
See also http://www.speechcomputing.com/node/466
Quentin
May be something to look
May be something to look for: MS has released a beta of SP1 for Vista and published some details regarding it:
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/pag...
These things tend to make hundreds of unannounced compatibility updates -- unless the VV-Vista conflict is structural
Bruce
Hopefully this will resolve
Hopefully this will resolve the VV problem.
However one would need an enormous disc in a laptop to cater for the OS and updates which just add to the bloat.
Quentin
Actually I understand from
Actually I understand from this report:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070829-vist...
that most of the compatibility updates have been issued via the Windows Update facility, which is MS's preferred medium rather than the SP's. In other words, its likely that if an improvement in Vista-VV compatibility were in the offering, it would already have appeared -- at least that's how I read this report.
Bruce