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# Transcription

You can dictate text into an iPhone (3G or better), iPod touch (4th generation or better), iPad, Android or other smartphone — or any other digital recording device, or into a computer microphone (if you find yourself at a computer other than yours, for example) — and ask Dragon Dictate to produce a transcript of what you said. Dragon uses your currently-active transcription audio source to transcribe the audio, so the file needs to contain your voice and should have preferably been dictated under circumstances similar to the ones in which you use Dragon on your Mac.

So, for example, if you normally use Dragon Dictate in a quiet environment but you tend to dictate into a digital recording device in a noisy atmosphere, you may want to train a new transcription audio source in Dragon Dictate and use it for producing transcripts. As with Dragon Dictate’s other speech recognition functions, its ability to produce an accurate transcript of your file depends on how well you’ve trained your current speech profile.

## Setting Up a Transcription Audio Source

To set up a transcription audio source, click the Add a Transcription Source button and give it a name. A dialog will open and ask you for an aif, aiff, m4a, m4v, mp3, mp4, or wav audio file that’s at least 90 seconds long, without significant gaps of silence. Select it and click Open. The Transcription Training window will open; a transcription of the audio will begin appearing and a progress bar at the bottom will let you know when it is done.

When it’s finished, you can click anywhere in the text, which will cause the phrase to become highlighted, with a dialog box pointing at it. In that dialog box, you can choose to ignore or accept the text, with the option to click the triangular play button to hear it played back. You can also type in the text box to change the text, if it was analyzed incorrectly; doing so helps train Dragon Dictate for future transcriptions. When you have accepted enough text, the bottom of the training window says “You can Train at any time,” with a Train button to the right.

When Dragon Dictate has finished training, it begins transcribing the file into a new Note Pad window. When transcription has finished, a dialog appears asking if you want to go to the Profiles window to select another profile or audio source, transcribe another audio file, or edit your transcription results.

## Creating Transcripts

After you have trained a transcription audio source, you can produce future transcripts by clicking the Tools menu and selecting Transcription...

In the resulting dialog box, select the file you want to use and click Open. The software recognizes these file formats: aif, aiff, m4a, m4v, mp3, mp4 and wav.

A progress window will track Dragon Dictate as it transcribes the file. When Dragon Dictate is done analyzing the file, it places the text in a Note Pad window.