F: tho those things that were happening before with ?
F: Y y you guys were doing a bunch of experiments with different front - ends and then with C: Well .
F: Is is that still sort of where it was , uh , the other day ?
C: We 're improving .
F: We 're improving .
C: Yeah .
D: Now the the You saw the note that the PLP now is getting basically the same as the MFCC .
F: Right .
D: Right ?
F: Right .
C: Yeah . Actually it looks like it 's getting better .
F: Oh .
C: So . But but it 's not F: Just with with age , kind of .
C: With age . Yeah .
F: Yeah . Yeah .
C: But , uh , that 's not d directly related to me .
C: Doesn't mean we can't talk about it .
C: Um , it seems It looks l I haven't The It 's The experiment is still not complete ,
C: but ,
C: um , it looks like the vocal tract length normalization is working beautifully , actually ,
F: Mm - hmm .
C: w using the warp factors that we computed for the SRI system and just applying them to the ICSI front - end .
F: That 's pretty funny .
C: Yeah .
G: So you just need to copy over to this one .
F: OK .
C: Just had to take the reciprocal of the number because they have different meanings in the two systems .
A: OK .
F: Ah !
F: Yeah . Well , that 's always good to do .
C: Yeah .
F: OK .
F: OK .
F: Uh C: But one issue actually that just came up in discussion with Liz and and Don was , um , as far as meeting recognition is concerned , um , we would really like to , uh , move , uh , to , uh , doing the recognition on automatic segmentations .
F: Yeah .
C: Because in all our previous experiments , we had the uh , you know , we were essentially cheating by having the , um , you know , the h the hand - segmentations as the basis of the recognition .
F: Mm - hmm .
C: And so now with Thilo 's segmenter working so well , I think we should consider doing a E: Mmm . So .
B: Come on .
E: Yeah . We But F: Y think you think we should increase the error rate .
C: uh , doing E: Anyway . Yeah .
F: Good .
E: Yeah .
C: Yeah .
F: Yeah .
C: Yeah .
E: That - that 's what I wanted to do anyway ,
G: Yeah .
C: Yeah .
E: so we should just get together and C: Yeah .
G: And even The good thing is that since you , um , have high recall , <comment> even if you have low precision cuz you 're over - generating , that 's good
G: because we could train noise models in the recognizer for these kinds of , uh , transients and things that come from the microphones ,
E: Yeah .
C: Right .
E: Yeah .
G: but I know that if we run recognition unconstrained on a whole waveform , we do very poorly because we 're we 're getting insertions in places what that you may well be cutting out .
C: Well E: Yeah .
F: Mm - hmm .
G: So we do need some kind of pre - segmentation .
C: We should we should consider doing some extra things , like , um , you know , retraining or adapting the  the models for background noise to the to this environment , for instance .
G: Mmm .
G: Yeah .
E: Yeah .
G: And , yeah , using Thilo 's , you know , posteriors or some kind of or C: So .
G: right now they 're they 're discrete ,
G: yes or no for a speaker , to consider those particular speaker background models .
E: Yeah .
G: So .
C: Right .
G: There 's lots of ins interesting things that could be done .
E: Yeah .
E: Yeah . We should do that .
G: So .
F: Good .
F: So , uh , why don't we , uh , do the IBM stuff ?
F: You had some thing about that ?
D: Yeah . So , um , talked with Brian and gave him the alternatives to the single beep at the end of each utterance that we had generated before .
F: Right .
D: And so F: The , uh , Chuck chunks .
D: Yeah .
E: Hmm .
D: The Chuck chunks .
D: Right .
D: And so he talked it over with the transcriber
D: and the transcriber thought that the easiest thing for them would be if there was a beep and then the nu a number , a digit , and then a beep , uh , at the beginning of each one
F: Yeah .
F: Yeah .
D: and that would help keep them from getting lost .
D: And , um , so Adam wrote a little script to generate those style , uh , beeps
D: and so we 're C: Where 'd you get the digits from ?
D: I came up here and just recorded the numbers one through ten .
A: They sound really good .
D: So .
G: That 's a great idea .
D: Does it sound OK ?
A: Yeah .
D: So , um Yeah . We just used those .
C: And do you splice them into the waveform ?
C: Or ?
D: Yeah . He then he d I recorded Actually , I recorded one through ten three times at three different speeds and then he picked .
C: Right .
C: Mm - hmm .
D: He liked the fastest one , so he just cut those out and spliced them in between , uh , two beeps .
E: It will be funny
A: It sounds like a radio announcer 's voice . Really .
E: uh D: Does it ?
A: Yeah , yeah .
E: It will be funny when you 're really reading digits , and then there are the chunks with with your digits in ?
D: Yeah . With my G: Oh , right .
A: Oh that 's right .
E: Yeah .
D: That 'll throw them ,
A: Now actually ,
D: huh ?
A: we 're Are we handling ?
F: Uh , maybe we should have you record A , B , C for those or something .
D: Yeah . <comment> Huh ! Maybe .
D: And she said it wasn't gonna the transcriber said it wouldn't be a problem cuz they can actually make a template , uh , that has beep , number , beep .
E: OK .
D: So for them it 'll be very quick
F: Yeah .
D: to to put those in there when they 're transcribing .
D: So , um , we We 're gonna send them one more sample meeting ,
D: uh , and Thilo has run his segmentation .
D: Adam 's gonna generate the chunked file .
D: And then , um , I 'll give it to Brian and they can try that out .
D: And when we get that back we 'll see if that sort of fixes the problem we had with , uh , too many beeps in the last transcription .
F: OK . Do w do what Do you have any idea of the turn - around on on those steps you just said ?
G: Great .
F: Uh .
D: Uh . Our s our On our side ?
D: or including IBM 's ?
F: Including IBM 's .
D: Well , I don't know .
D: The last one seemed like it took a couple of weeks .
F: OK .
D: Um , maybe even three .
D: Uh , that 's just the I B M side .
D: Our side is quick .
D: I mean , I I don't know . How long does your ?
E: It should @ @ be finished today or something . Yeah .
F: Well , I meant the overall thing .
F: e e u u <comment> The reason I 'm asking is because , uh , Jane and I have just been talking , and she 's just been doing . Uh , e a , you know , further hiring of transcribers .
D: Yeah .
D: Mm - hmm .
D: Mm - hmm .
F: And so we don't sort of really know exactly what they 'll be doing , how long they 'll be doing it , and so forth ,
F: because right now she has no choice but to operate in the mode that we already have working .
D: Right .
F: And , uh ,
F: so it 'd be It 'd be good to sort of get that resolved , uh , soon as we could ,
D: Yeah .
F: and then D: I Yeah , I I hope @ @ <comment> we can get a better estimate from this one that we send them .
F: Mm - hmm .
D: So . Um .
D: I I don't know yet how long that 'll take .
F: Yeah . Um F: I mean in particular I would I would really hope that when we do this DARPA meeting in July that we sort of have we 're we 're into production mode , somehow D: Mm - hmm .
F: You know , that we we actually have a stream going and we know how how well it does and how and how it operates .
D: Yeah .
F: I think that would that would certainly be a a very good thing to know .
D: Right . Right .
F: OK .
F: Uh .
F: Maybe before we do the meeting info organize thing , maybe you could say relevant stuff about where we are in transcriptions .
A: OK . So , um , we  Uh , the transcribers have continued to work past what I 'm calling " set one " ,
A: which was the s the set that I 've been , uh OK , talking about up to this point ,
A: but , uh , they 've gotten five meetings done in that set .
A: Right now they 're in the process of being edited .
A: Um , the , um A: Let 's see ,
A: I hired two transcribers today . I 'm thinking of hiring another one ,
A: which will because we 've had a lot of attrition .
A: And that will bring our total to F: They die off after they do this for a while .
A: Yeah .
D: Burn - out .
F: Yeah .
A: Well , you know , it 's it 's various things .
A: So , one of them had a baby . Um , you know , one of them really w wasn't planning C: Oh , that was an unfor unforeseen side effect of A: Eh , one of them , um , had never planned to work past January .
A: I mean , it 's th all these various things ,
A: cuz we , you know , we presented it as possibly a month project back in January
A: and and and and Um ,
A: so it makes sense .
A: Uh , through attrition we we 've we 're down to to two , but they 're really solid .
A: We 're really lucky the two that we kept .
A: And , um Well , I don't mean I don't mean anything against the others . <comment> What I mean is we 've got a good cause a good core . No . We had a good core G: Well , they won't hear this since they 're going . They won't be transcribing this meeting .
A: Yeah , but still . I mean , I d it 's just a matter of we w we 're we 've got , uh ,
F: No backs .