B: Uh - huh .
E: Yeah , and I I think that they 're going much more on acoustics than they are on visuals .
A: Well that that I 'm not sure .
E: So .
A: What you the digital what the digital task that you had your interface ?
A: Um , I know for a fact that one of those sh she could really well she could judge what th what the number was based on the on the waveform .
E: Yeah , that 's actually true .
E: Yeah , you 're right .
E: You 're absolutely right .
E: Yeah , I found the same thing that when I was scanning through the wave form I could see when someone started to read digits just by the shapes .
A: Yeah , she could tell which one was seven .
E: Um , maybe .
A: Yeah .
C: So I don't E: But C: I 'm I 'm now entirely confused about what they do .
C: So , they 're they 're looking at a mixed signal ,
C: or they 're looking C: what what are they looking at visually ?
A: Well , they have a choice .
A: They could choose any signal to look at .
A: I 've tried lookin but usually they look at the mixed .
A: But I 've I 've tried looking at the single signal and and in order to judge when it when it was speech and when it wasn't ,
E: Oh .
A: but the problem is then you have breaths which which show up on the signal .
C: But the procedure that you 're imagining , I mean , people vary from this , is that they have the mixed signal wave form in front of them ,
A: Yes .
A: Yes .
C: and they have multiple ,
C: uh , well , let 's see , there isn't we don't have transcription yet .
C: So but there 's markers of some sort that have been happening automatically ,
E: Right .
A: Yes .
C: and those show up on the mixed signal ?
C: There 's a @ @ clicks ?
E: N the t
A: Oh ,
A: they show up on the separate ribbons .
E: Right .
A: So you have a separate ribbon for each channel ,
C: There 're separate ribbons .
A: and and i i it 'll be because it 's being segmented as channel at a time with his with Thilo 's new procedure ,
A: then you don't have the correspondence of the times across the bins uh across the ribbons
A: uh you could have C: And is there a line moving across the waveform as it goes ?
E: Yes .
A: Yes .
C: OK , so The way you 're imaging is they kind of play it ,
C: and they see oh this happened , then this happened , then and if it 's about right , they just sort of let it slide ,
E: Right .
A: Yeah .
E: Right .
C: and if it if it there 's a question on something , they stop and maybe look at the individual wave form .
E: Right .
A: Oh , well not not " look " .
E: Well , they wouldn't look at it at this point .
E: They would just listen .
C: They they might look at it ,
E: Well , the problem is that the the interface doesn't really allow you to switch visuals .
C: right ?
A: Not very quickly .
E: The problem is that that the Tcl - TK interface with the visuals , it 's very slow to load waveforms .
A: You can but it takes time .
A: That 's it .
C: Uh - huh .
E: And so when I tried that that was the first thing I tried when I first started it ,
A: Oh , oh .
A: Visually .
E: right ?
A: You can you can switch quickly between the audio ,
A: but you just can't get the visual display to show quickly .
A: So you have to A: It takes , I don't know , three , four minutes to A: Well , I mean , it takes it takes long enough D: Yeah , it 's very slow to do that .
A: It takes long enough cuz it has to reload the
A: I I don't know exactly what it 's doing frankly
A: cuz but it t it takes long enough that it 's just not a practical alternative .
D: That w
E: Well it it does some sort of shape pre - computation so that it can then scroll it quickly ,
G: But you can cancel that .
E: yeah .
D: Yeah .
E: But then you can't change the resolution or scroll quickly .
G: Oh , really ?
E: So .
G: Huh !
A: Now you could set up multiple windows , each one with a different signal showing , and then look between the windows .
A: Maybe that 's the solution .
E: I mean , we we could do different interfaces ,
G: What if you preload them all ?
E: right ?
E: I mean , so so we could use like X Waves instead of Transcriber ,
A: Yeah .
E: and it loads faster , certainly .
G: What if you were to preload all the channels or or initially G: like doesn't E: Well that 's what I tried originally .
E: So I I actually before , uh , Dave Gelbart did this , I did an interface which showed each waveform and ea a ribbon for each waveform ,
G: Mm - hmm .
E: but the problem with it is even with just three waveforms it was just painfully slow to scroll .
G: Oh , OK .
E: So you just scroll a screen and it would , you know go " kur - chunk ! "
A: Mm - hmm .
E: And so it just was not doable with the current interface .
A: You know , I am thinking if we have a meeting with only four speakers
A: and , you know , you could fire up a Transcriber interface for , y you know , in different windows , multiple ones , one for each channel .
A: And it 's sort of a a hack but I mean it would be one way of seeing the visual form .
E: I think that if we decide that we need that they need to see the visuals , we need to change the interface so that they can do that .
A: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
D: That 's actually what I thought of , loading the chopped up waveforms , I mean , you know , that that would make it faster E: An
C: So G: Hmm .
E: But isn't E: The chopped up waveforms .
B: The problem is if if anything 's cut off , you can't expand it from the chopped up D: So .
E: Isn't that G: Right .
D: Right , but if you
E: And wouldn't that be the same <comment> as the mixed signal ?
D: a at some point D: No , I mean the individual channels that were chopped up that D: it 'd be nice to be able to go back and forth between those short segments .
C: Mm - hmm .
D: Cuz you don't really nee like nine tenths of the time you 're throwing most of them out ,
D: but what you need are tho that particular channel , or that particular location ,
E: Yeah .
D: and ,
D: um , might be nice , cuz we save those out already , <comment> um , to be able to do that .
A: Yeah .
D: But it won't work for IBM of course ,
D: it only works here cuz they 're not saving out the individual channels .
A: Well , I I do think that this this will be a doable procedure ,
C: Yeah .
A: and have them starting with mixed
C: OK .
A: and , um , then when they get into overlaps , just have them systematically check all the channels to be sure that there isn't something hidden from from audio view .
E: Yeah .
E: Yeah , hopefully , I mean E: The mixed signal , the overlaps are pretty audible because it is volume equalized .
E: So I think they should be able to hear .
E: The only problem is is , you know , counting how many and if they 're really correct or not .
E: So , I don't know .
D: I don't know that you can locate them very well from the mixed signal ,
E: Right but but once once you know that they happen , you can at least listen to the close talking ,
D: but you would know that they were there , and then you would switch .
D: Right .
D: And then you would switch into the other E: so .
C: But right now , to do this limitation , the switching is going to be switching of the audio ? Is what she 's saying .
E: Right .
A: Yeah .
C: So E: Right ,
E: so so
E: did Dave Did Dave do that change where you can actually just click rather than having to go up to the menu to listen to the individual channels ?
C: so they 're using their ears to do these markings anyway .
A: Yes .
D: Yeah .
A: Yes .
A: Click A: Um ,
E: I had suggested it before .
E: I just don't know whether he did it or not .
A: I 'm not sure what click what click on the ribbon ?
A: Yeah , you can get that E: Yeah .
A: oh , oh ,
A: get you can get the , uh you can get it to switch audio ?
E: Yeah .
A: Uh , not last I tried ,
A: but , um , maybe he 's changed it again .
E: We should get him to do that
E: because , uh , I think that would be much , much faster than going to the menu .
A: I disagree .
A: There 's a reason I disagree , and that is that , uh , you it 's very good to have a dissociation between the visual and the audio .
A: There 're times when I wanna hear the mixed signal ,
A: bu but I want to transcribe on the single channel .
A: So right now E: Then maybe just buttons down at the bottom next to it .
A: Maybe , I just don't I don't see that it 's a E: Just something so that it 's not in the menu option so that you can do it much faster .
A: Well , I mean , that 's the i I I think that might be a personal style thing .
A: I find it really convenient the way the way it 's set up right now .
E: Well it just seems to me that if you wanna quickly " well was that Jane , no , was that Chuck , no , was that Morgan " , right now , you have to go up to the menu ,
E: and each time , go up to the menu , select it , listen to that channel then click below ,
E: and then go back to the menu , select the next one , and then click below .
A: That 's fine .
A: Yeah , it 's true .
E: So you can definitely streamline that with the i with the interface .
A: Yeah , it could be faster ,
A: but , you know , I mean , th in the ideal world E: What ?
A: Yeah .
A: No I I agree that 'd be nice .
E: OK .
A: Yeah .
A: OK .
C: So , um , Done with that ?
C: Does any I forget ,
C: does anybody , uh , working on any any Eurospeech submission related to this ?
E: I would like to try to do something on digits
E: but I just don't know if we have time .
E: I mean , it 's due next Friday
E: so we have to do the experiments and write the paper .
E: So , I 'm gonna try ,
E: but , uh ,
E: we 'll just have to see .
E: So actually I wanna get together with both Andreas and , uh , uh , Stephane with their respective systems .
C: Yeah .
C: Yeah there was that we
C: that 's right ,
C: we had that one conversation about , uh , what what what did it mean for , uh , one of those speakers to be pathological ,
E: Right ,
C: was it a E: and I haven't had s chance to sit down and listen .
F: Oh , I haven't I haven't listened to them either ,
E: I was going to do that this afternoon .
F: but there must be something wrong ,
F: I mean ,
F: unless our E: Well , Morgan and I were were having a debate <comment> about that .
E: Whereas I think it it 's probably something pathologic
E: and actually Stephane 's results , I think confirm that .
E: He s he did the Aurora system
E: also got very lousy average error , like fifteen or or , uh , fifteen to twenty percent average ?
E: But then he ran it just on the lapel , and got about five or six percent word error ?
E: So that that means to me that somewhere in the other recordings there are some pathological cases .
E: But , you know , we th that may not be true .
E: It may be just some of the segments they 're just doing a lousy job on .
E: So I 'll I 'll listen to it and find out since you 'd actually split it up by segment .
C: Right .
E: So I can actually listen to it .
F: Yeah .
B: Did you run the Andreas the r SRI recognizer on the digits ?
F: Yeah .
E: Oh , I thought he had sent that around to everyone ,
E: did you just sent that to me ?
F: No , I d I didn't .
E: Oh .
F: Since I considered those preliminary , I didn't .
F: But , yeah , if you take B: I it wasn't E: It was bimodal .
F: So if you F: Yeah , it 's actually , um , it uh it was trimodal , actually E: Oh , was it trimodal , OK .
F: trimodal ,
C: Yeah .
F: so
C: There 's zero , a little bit , and a lot .
F: there were  t there was there was one h one bump at ze around zero , which were the native speakers ,
C: Yeah .
F: the non - pathological native speakers .
C: Yeah .
B: Zero percent error ?
C: Y yeah .
F: Then there was another bump at , um ,  oh , like fifteen or something .
C: Oh was it fifteen ?
B: This is error you 're talking about ?
F: whe
E: Yeah .
C: Yeah .
F: Yeah .
B: OK .
F: Those were the non - natives .
F: And then there was another distinct bump at , like , a hundred , which must have been some problem .
A: Oh , wow !
F: I can't imagine that A: Oh , OK .
G: What is patho what do you mean by pathological ?
G: I 'm sorry , I don't E: Just just something really wrong with G: Oh .
F: In the recording
E: A bug is what I mean ,
E: so that it 's like G: Oh , OK .
G: I see .
F: And there was this one meeting , I forget which one it was , where like , uh , six out of the eight channels were all , like had a hundred percent error .
E: Which probably means like there was a th the recording interface crashed ,
G: Right .
E: or there was a short you know , someone was jiggling with a cord
F: But E: or , uh , I extracted it incorrectly ,
F: But E: it was labeled G: Mm - hmm .
E: it was transcribed incorrectly ,
E: something really bad happened ,
G: OK .
E: and I just haven't listened to it yet to find out what it was .
F: So , if I excluded the pathological ones , by definition , those that had like over ninety - five percent error rate , and the non - natives , then the average error rate was like one point four or something ,
C: What we 're calling .
A: Oh .
G: Hmm !
F: which which seemed reasonable given that , you know , the models weren't tuned for  for it .
A: Oh .
C: Yeah .
F: And the grammar wasn't tuned either .
F: It was just a @ @ .
B: And it didn't matter whether it was the lapel or whether it was the F: I haven't split it up that way ,
F: but it would be D: But there 's no overlap during the digit readings , so it shouldn't really matter .
G: Right .
F: Right .
B: Yeah .
F: So it should C: No , but there 's a little difference ,
E: There 's a lot .
C: and we haven't looked at it for digits ,
E: Yeah .
C: right ?
C: And so ,
B: Yeah , so I was curious about that .
C: cuz because what he was what I was saying when I looked at those things is it it I was almost gonna call it quadrimodal because  because there was a whole lot of cases where it was zero percent .
F: Mm - hmm .
C: They just plain got it all right .
F: Yeah .
C: And then there and then there was another bunch that were couple percent or something .
F: But if you p if you actually histogrammed it , and it was a nice uh , you know , it it was zero was the most of them ,
C: Yeah .
E: A normal .
E: Yeah .
F: but then there were the others were sort of decaying from there .
C: Yeah ,
C: yeah .
F: And then there was the bump for the non - natives and then the pathological ones ,
C: I see .
F: so .
C: I see .
E: Yeah , cuz some of our non - natives are pretty non - native .
E: So .
C: Yeah .
A: You did you have , uh , something in the report about , uh , about , uh , for f uh , forced alignment ?
A: Have you have you started on that ?
F: Oh , well , yeah , so I 've been struggling with the forced alignments .
F: Um .  So the scheme that I drew on the board last time where we tried to , um allow reject models for the s speech from other speakers ,
F: um ,  most of the time it doesn't work very well .
F: So , um , and the I haven't done I mean , the only way to check this right now was for me to actually load these into X Waves and , you know , plus the alignments , and s play them and see where the C: Hmm .
F: And it looks And so I looked at all of the utterances from you , Chuck , in that one conversation ,
F: I don't know which You probably know which one I mean , it 's where you were on the lapel and Morgan was sitting next to you
F: and we can hear everything Morgan says .
A: Hmm .
F: But and and some of what you I mean , you also appear quite a bit in that cross - talk .
F: So , I actually went through all of those ,
F: there were I think fifty - five segments , um , in in X Waves , and and sort of did a crude check ,
F: and more often than not , it it gets it wrong .
F: So there 's either the beginning , mostly the beginning word , where th you , um , you know , Chuck talks somewhere into the segment ,
F: but the first , um , word of what he says , often " I "
F: but it 's very reduced " I , "
F: that 's just aligned to the beginning of someone else 's speech , uh in that segment ,
F: which is cross - talk .
F: So , um , I 'm still tinkering with it ,
F: but it might well be that we can't get clean alignments out of this out of those , uh , channels ,
F: so .
C: Unless maybe we do this , uh , um , cancellation business .
D: Right , but that 's I mean , that was our plan ,
F: Yeah , right .
D: but it 's clear from Dan that this is not something you can do in a short amount of time .
C: Oh , the short amount of time thing , right .
D: So D: so we you know , we had spent a lot of time , um , writing up the HLT paper
D: and we wanted to use that , uh , kind of analysis ,
C: Yeah .
D: but the HLT paper has , you know , it 's a very crude measure of overlap .
D: It 's not really something you could scientifically say is overlap ,
D: it 's just whether or not the , um , the segments that were all synchronized , whether there was some overlap somewhere .
E: c High correlation .
D: And , you know , that pointed out some differences ,
D: so he thought well if we can do something quick and dirty because Dan said the cross - cancellation , it 's not straight - forward .
D: If it were straight - forward then we would try it ,
D: but D: so , it 's sort of good to hear that it was not straight - forward , thinking if we can get decent forced alignments , then at least we can do sort of a overall report of what happens with actual overlap in time ,
D: but , um B: I didn't think that his message said it wasn't straight - forward .
E: Well if we 'd just C: Well
E: Um - hmm .
B: I thought he 's just saying you have to look over a longer time window when you do it .
D: and the but there are some issues of this timing , um , in the recordings
C: Yeah .
D: and B: Right .
B: So you just have to look over longer time when you 're trying to align the things ,