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Court Reporter Software?
Submitted by frog_jr on Tue, 12/13/2005 - 16:45.
I have just begun to look into court reporter packages, and I would like to see them make their existance known here at this forum. I am looking at ProCat and Isis so far, and would appreciate any advice as to which package I might want to look into, anything at all that I can gain from others' experience. So far I have only met 2 live speech reporters. I am hoping for user feedback, but any input from vendors or advertisers is welcome also. I think I can envision perhaps a plateau, or perhaps dead end with Dragon and ViaVoice, for court reporting purposes. Any takers?
Any takers? I’ll take a
Any takers? I’ll take a shot at this.
I am a voice writer and I purchased ProCAT last February and could probably write a book with all the problems that I have had with it. Granted, some of them were caused by hardware problems, but ProCAT has been unable to fix some of my problems and have just left me hanging more than once. It seems like one problem will be fixed and then another one will appear. My personal opinion is that they lack the knowledge they should have in how ViaVoice operates. And they tend to blame a lot of the problems with their system on ViaVoice. Also, and I really don’t know what this means, but I believe they use the run-time version of ViaVoice.
Two main problems that I have had and still have is the software freezing up on me and my voice recording “skipping.” I have been told by ProCAT that the system just needs to be “trained” more. Now my room recording is also skipping and they have not gotten back to me yet on how to fix it. There have been way too many times that the system has frozen up on me and I have lost both my voice recording and the room recording and have had to rely on my backup digital Olympus recorder to re-type the proceeding. I don’t know, maybe I’m expecting too much from a $5000-plus piece of software.
I have been unable to get any kind of decent recognition. I am currently using the Accuspeak mask which is supposed to have one of the better microphones in it. One of my problems is that I tend to be VERY, VERY quiet, and ViaVoice is not recognizing my voice. I can only compare it to if you whisper into ViaVoice, although, I’m not whispering. If I work on it at home and keep my voice up the recognition isn’t too bad (maybe 70%).
Many times I will be dictating and absolutely nothing will come up. Sometimes many words are skipped and then the new words I am dictating will come up; other times the computer seems to hesitate and then throw 1 or 2 lines up at a time. This probably has something to do with ViaVoice and I’ll certainly take any suggestions from anybody on this. One thing to keep in mind with court reporters is that sometimes we are talking over 200 words per minute.
Anyway, I am currently using Audioscribe’s Digitran to take down the proceeding and then I come home and I re-dictate it into ProCAT and then do my corrections. There is a way that I can reformat the Digitran’s recording to the 22 khz mono 16 bit format that ProCAT requires and then run the sound through and have it translate, but the translation rate is really bad.
I know that Isis used to give you a 30-day trial. I believe they are quite a bit cheaper than ProCat. The only problem with Isis is when I was looking into it they did not have the room recording feature built into the software.
You also have the option of Eclipse. The one problem that I see with that is that you are dealing with two different companies for support (Eclipse and Audioscribe) and I’m not sure how knowledgeable Eclipse tech support is on the voice recognition (they deal mainly with machine writers). Also, with Eclipse I believe you have the option of using either ViaVoice or Dragon whereas ProCAT only uses ViaVoice. Stenograph is coming out with Case Catalyst for voice writers which incorporates Dragon. I do know a reporter who is beta testing it and she said that they have some things to work out.
In my opinion, the most stable court reporter program for voice writers out there is probably Audioscribe. I purchased and use their Digitran just for recording and if I need their tech support I don’t have to wait for them to call me back. I have always been able to talk directly to them when I have called and they have given me information that ProCAT hasn’t been able to. I believe you can use either ViaVoice or Dragon with their system but they recommend that you use Dragon. I do know a reporter who is using this system with Dragon 8 and she has had problems with the dropdown being way behind (like up to 10 minutes) so she has had to reinstall Dragon 7.
Good luck. And I’d be curious to know what you decide on.
Cheryl
Cheryl, Thanks a lot for the
Cheryl,
Thanks a lot for the valuable input. I am hoping for more responses still, but you have been very informative. My original intent was to see of I could succeed by using just Dragon and WP, without purchasing expensive packages. I am looking and will continue to look at these packages, but I'm not rushing. The in-house court reporters on Capital Hill are all still stenographers, and have just started playing with Isis. I have met one Procat user, and her results were not very accurate before proofing. It's a tough thing to do, and unlike any other application of SR. Based on my experiences with ViaVoice and Dragon, both of which I have used for transcription of thousands of pages, I am looking forward to trying MS' next SR as much as anything else. That and a faster machine!
Hi Cheryl, I am a court
Hi Cheryl,
I am a court reporter and was looking to switch the realtime system that I have and get either ProCat or Case Catalyst.
I have heard so many people say that Dragon freezes up (which I have experienced myself), and I've talked with people who use everything out there and they've all had this with Dragon. Although, apparently you have had ViaVoice freeze up too.
My question is this: Your friend who is a beta tester with Case Catalyst, is there any way I could talk to her? Does she feel that they have worked the kinks out of it yet? I don't want to get it and have it freeze up. Is there anyway she could email me @ blue...@yahoo.com? If you know a lot about it I would be happy to hear from you too! All of this software is so expensive and frustrating!!
Thanks
Karen
Karen wrote: Although,
Although, apparently you have had ViaVoice freeze up too.
Karen
I never had a freeze up with ViaVoice.
The only problem I have is with XP, which, for some odd reason, seems to cause some corruption to the voice recogniser every four or five days, as a result of which I copy and paste my back-up user folder in place of the corrupt one.
This has only happened to me with XP on my laptop. I have never had any problem with Windows 2000 in my desktop and old laptop, so therefore I place the responsibility solely and squarely on the XP.
Another thing which seems to happen every few days in XP when I am working in Word or Outlook Express is that I get that apology message from Microsoft that the program has to be closed. Again I never had that problem with Win 2000.
At the Vista demonstration, which I referred to in another posting, the claim is made that these problems should not arise with Vista. I will believe this when I see it.
Quentin