Best Laid Plans
Yesterday I thought I’d have a long writing period today. Hah! As someone said, “the road to hell is paved…”
This time the challenge I had to overcome was learning a new piece of software – Dragon Naturally Speaking. Yes, the same program I muttered about on June 3rd.
I spend a couple of hours with the new ghostwriting client which mean I had tape to transcribe. I’d already figured out how to download the .wav files from my Olympus Digital Recorder. That’s a snap.
But Dragon is really designed to let people talk to their computers through a microphone. I could, for example, be dictating this blog entry and I suspect it would come out pretty clean. One day I’ll try it. Dragon’s ads and descriptions tout the fact it will also transcribe from recorders, and it will, but the documentation of that feature is totally lacking from the manual. Their website is almost silent on the subject.
So much of today was trying things, and sure enough I could get it to transcribe a portion of the .wav file, but only a portion. I finally gave up and called tech support.
It becomes even more obvious that Dragon, well the company is Nuance, really doesn’t recognize transcribing from tapes as a feature they want to support. The tech support person kept quizzing me about my recorder while I kept insisting that wasn’t the problem. Finally I asked for a supervisor because we just weren’t getting anywhere.
During the long, long period on hold, I realized that I could ask if there is a limit on .wav file size. When the tech support guy came back to tell me it would be another “few” minutes to get the supervisor, I asked that question and low and behold there is way to adjust for larger file sizes.
That solved the problem. Now I’ve got the transcriptions in Word and I’m thrashed. Looks like it won’t be until Sunday that I get several hours clear to begin to work on this book… I’ve got other plans for Saturday.
Write well and often,
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