PhD A: Yeah .
Postdoc B: And then we run it through then it then I 'm gonna edit it and I 'm gonna run it through channelize which takes it into Dave Gelbart 's form format .
PhD A: Yeah .
Postdoc B: And then you have , all these things split across according to channel , and then that means that , if a person contributed more than once in a given , overlap during that time bend that that two parts of the utterance end up together , it 's the same channel ,
PhD A: OK .
Postdoc B: and then I took his tool , and last night for the first thirty minutes of one of these transcripts , I , tightened up the , um , boundaries on individual speakers ' channels ,
PhD A: OK . Yeah .
Postdoc B: cuz his his interface allows me to have total flexibility in the time tags across the channels .
PhD A: Yeah .
Postdoc B: And um , so .
PhD A: so , yeah yeah , that that that 's great , but what would be nice to have some more meetings , not just one meeting to to be sure that that , there is a system ,
PhD D: So , current This week .
Postdoc B: Yes . Might not be what you need .
Grad F: Yeah , so if we could get a couple meetings done with that level of precision I think that would be a good idea .
PhD A: OK . Yeah .
Postdoc B: Oh , OK . Uh , how how m much time so the meetings vary in length , what are we talking about in terms of the number of minutes you 'd like to have as your as your training set ?
PhD A: It seems to me that it would be good to have , a few minutes from from different meetings , so . But I 'm not sure about how much .
Postdoc B: OK , now you 're saying different meetings because of different speakers or because of different audio quality or both or ?
PhD A: Both both . Different different number of speakers , different speakers , different conditions .
Postdoc B: OK .
Professor C: Yeah , we don't have that much variety in meetings yet , uh , I mean we have this meeting and the feature meeting and we have a couple others that we have uh , couple examples of . But but , uh ,
PhD A: Yeah , m Yeah .
Postdoc B: Mm - hmm .
Grad E: Even probably with the gains differently will affect it , you mean PhD A: Uh , not really as Professor C: Poten - potentially .
PhD A: uh , because of the normalization , yeah .
Grad E: Oh , cuz you use the normalization ? OK .
PhD A: Yeah .
Professor C: Oh , OK .
PhD G: We can try running we haven't done this yet because , um , uh , Andreas an is is gonna move over the SRI recognizer . i basically I ran out of machines at SRI ,
PhD A: OK .
PhD G: cuz we 're running the evals and I just don't have machine time there . But , once that 's moved over , uh , hopefully in a a couple days , then , we can take , um , what Jane just told us about as , the presegmented , {nonvocalsound} the the segmentations that you did , at level eight or som {comment} at some , threshold that Jane , tha right , and try doing , forced alignment . um , on the word strings .
Grad F: Oh , shoot !
PhD A: Yeah . Yeah .
Postdoc B: The pre presegment
PhD A: Yeah .
Postdoc B: yeah .
PhD A: With the recognizer ? Yeah .
PhD G: And if it 's good , then that will that may give you a good boundary . Of course if it 's good , we don't then we 're we 're fine ,
PhD A: Yeah . M
PhD G: but , I don't know yet whether these , segments that contain a lot of pauses around the words , will work or not .
PhD A: I I would quite like to have some manually transcribed references for for the system , as I 'm not sure if if it 's really good to compare with with some other automatic , found boundaries .
PhD G: Yeah . Right .
Postdoc B: Well , no , if we were to start with this and then tweak it h manually , would that that would be OK ?
PhD A: Yeah .
PhD G: Right .
PhD A: Yeah sure .
PhD G: They might be OK .
Postdoc B: OK .
PhD G: It you know it really depends on a lot of things ,
PhD A: Yeah .
PhD G: but , I would have maybe a transciber , uh , look at the result of a forced alignment and then adjust those .
PhD A: Yeah . To a adjust them , or , yeah . Yeah , yeah .
PhD G: That might save some time .
PhD A: Yeah , great .
PhD G: If they 're horrible it won't help at all , but they might not be horrible .
PhD A: Yeah .
PhD G: So but I 'll let you know when we , uh , have that .
PhD A: OK , great .
Postdoc B: How many minutes would you want from I mean , we could easily , get a section , you know , like say a minute or so , from every meeting that we have so f from the newer ones that we 're working on , everyone that we have . And then , should provide this .
PhD A: If it 's not the first minute of of the meeting , that that 's OK with me , but , in in the first minute , uh , Often there are some some strange things going on which which aren't really , well , for , which which aren't re re really good . So . What what I 'd quite like , perhaps , is , to have , some five minutes of of of different meetings , so .
Postdoc B: Somewhere not in the very beginning , five minutes , OK .
PhD A: Yeah .
Postdoc B: And , then I wanted to ask you just for my inter information , then , would you , be trai cuz I don't quite unders so , would you be training then , um , the segmenter so that , it could , on the basis of that , segment the rest of the meeting ? So , if I give you like five minutes is the idea that this would then be applied to , uh , to , providing tighter time bands ?
PhD A: I I could do a a retraining with that , yeah .
Postdoc B: Wow , interesting .
PhD A: That 's but but I hope that I I don't need to do it .
Postdoc B: OK .
PhD A: So , uh it c can be do in an unsupervised way .
Postdoc B: Uh - huh .
PhD A: So .
Postdoc B: Excellent . Excellent , OK .
PhD A: I 'm I 'm not sure , but , for for for those three meetings whi which I which I did , it seems to be , quite well , but , there are some some as I said some problems with the lapel mike , but , perhaps we can do something with with cross - correlations to , to get rid of the of those . And . Yeah . That 's that 's what I that 's my future work . Well well what I want to do is to to look into cross - correlations for for removing those , false overlaps .
Postdoc B: Wonderful .
PhD G: Are the , um , wireless , different than the wired , mikes , at all ? I mean , have you noticed any difference ?
PhD A: I 'm I 'm not sure , um , if if there are any wired mikes in those meetings , or , uh , I have have to loo have a look at them but , I 'm I 'm I think there 's no difference between ,
PhD G: So it 's just the lapel versus everything else ?
PhD A: Yeah . Yeah .
Postdoc B: OK , so then , if that 's five minutes per meeting we 've got like twelve minutes , twelve meetings , roughly , that I 'm that I 've been working with , then Professor C: Of of of the meetings that you 're working with , how many of them are different , tha
PhD A: No .
Professor C: are there any of them that are different than , these two meetings ?
Postdoc B: Well oh wa in terms of the speakers or the conditions or the ?
Professor C: Yeah , speakers . Sorry .
PhD A: Yeah , that Postdoc B: Um , we have different combinations of speakers .
Professor C: So .
Postdoc B: I mean , just from what I 've seen , uh , there are some where , um , you 're present or not present , and , then then you have the difference between the networks group and this group
PhD A: Yeah , I know , some of the NSA meetings , yeah .
Professor C: Yeah . So I didn't know in the group you had if you had PhD A: Yeah .
Professor C: so you have the networks meeting ?
PhD A: Yeah .
Postdoc B: Yep , we do .
Professor C: Do you have any of Jerry 's meetings in your , pack , er ,
Postdoc B: Um , no .
Professor C: No ?
Postdoc B: We could , I mean you you recorded one last week or so . I could get that new one in this week I get that new one in .
Grad F: Yep . u
PhD G: We 're gonna be recording them every Monday ,
Professor C: Yeah . Cuz I think he really needs variety ,
PhD G: so PhD A: Yeah .
Postdoc B: Great .
Professor C: and and having as much variety for speaker certainly would be a big part of that I think .
PhD A: Yeah .
Postdoc B: OK , so if I , OK , included include , OK , then , uh , if I were to include all together samples from twelve meetings that would only take an hour and I could get the transcribers to do that right I mean , what I mean is , that would be an hour sampled , and then they 'd transcribe those that hour , right ? That 's what I should do ?
Professor C: Yeah . And .
PhD A: That 's that 's .
Postdoc B: I don't mean transcribe
Professor C: Right . Ye - But you 're y
Postdoc B: I mean I mean adjust . So they get it into the multi - channel format and then adjust the timebands so it 's precise .
Professor C: So that should be faster than the ten times kind of thing ,
Postdoc B: Absolutely . I did I did , um , uh , so , last night I did , uh ,
Professor C: yeah .
Postdoc B: Oh gosh , well , last night , I did about half an hour in , three hours , which is not , terrific ,
Professor C: Yeah .
Postdoc B: but , um , anyway , it 's an hour and a half per Professor C: Yeah . Well , that 's probably .
PhD A: So .
Postdoc B: Well , I can't calculate on my , on my feet .
PhD A: Do the transcribers actually start wi with , uh , transcribing new meetings , or are they ?
Postdoc B: Well , um they 're still working they still have enough to finish that I haven't assigned a new meeting ,
PhD A: OK .
Postdoc B: but the next , m m I was about to need to assign a new meeting and I was going to take it from one of the new ones ,
PhD A: OK .
Postdoc B: and I could easily give them Jerry Feldman 's meeting , no problem . And , then PhD A: OK .
PhD G: So they 're really running out of , data , prett I mean that 's good .
Postdoc B: Mm - hmm . Uh , that first set .
PhD G: Um , OK .
Professor C: They 're running out of data unless we s make the decision that we should go over and start , uh , transcribing the other set .
PhD G: So Professor C: There the first the first half .
PhD A: Yeah .
Postdoc B: And so I was in the process of like editing them but this is wonderful news .
PhD A: OK .
Professor C: Alright .
Postdoc B: We funded the experiment with , uh also we were thinking maybe applying that that to getting the , Yeah , that 'll be , very useful to getting the overlaps to be more precise all the way through .
Professor C: So this , blends nicely into the update on transcripts .
Postdoc B: Yes , it does . So , um , {comment} um , Liz , and and Don , and I met this morning , in the BARCO room , with the lecture hall ,
Professor C: OK .
PhD G: Yeah , please . Go ahead . And this afternoon .
Postdoc B: and this afternoon , it drifted into the afternoon , {comment} uh , concerning this issue of , um , the , well there 's basically the issue of the interplay between the transcript format and the processing that , they need to do for , the SRI recognizer . And , um , well , so , I mentioned the process that I 'm going through with the data , so , you know , I get the data back from the transcri Well , s uh , metaphorically , get the data back from the transcriber , and then I , check for simple things like spelling errors and things like that . And , um , I 'm going to be doing a more thorough editing , with respect to consistency of the conventions . But they 're they 're generally very good . And , then , I run it through , uh , the channelize program to get it into the multi - channel format , OK . And the , what we discussed this morning , I would summarize as saying that , um , these units that result , in a a particular channel and a particular timeband , at at that level , um , vary in length . And , um , {nonvocalsound} their recognizer would prefer that the units not be overly long . But it 's really an empirical question , whether the units we get at this point through , just that process I described might be sufficient for them . So , as a first pass through , a first chance without having to do a lot of hand - editing , what we 're gonna do , is , I 'll run it through channelize , give them those data after I 've done the editing process and be sure it 's clean . And I can do that , pretty quickly , with just , that minimal editing , without having to hand - break things .
Professor C: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc B: And then we 'll see if the units that we 're getting , uh , with the at that level , are sufficient . And maybe they don't need to be further broken down . And if they do need to be further broken down then maybe it just be piece - wise , maybe it won't be the whole thing . So , that 's that 's what we were discussing , this morning as far as I Among PhD G: Right .
Postdoc B: also we discussed some adaptational things ,
PhD G: Then lots of Postdoc B: so it 's like ,
PhD G: Right .
Postdoc B: uh You know I hadn't , uh , incorporated , a convention explicitly to handle acronyms , for example , but if someone says , PZM it would be nice to have that be directly interpretable from , the transcript what they said ,
Professor C: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc B: or Pi - uh Tcl TCL I mean . It 's like y it 's and so , um , I 've I 've incorporated also convention , with that but that 's easy to handle at the post editing phase , and I 'll mention it to , transcribers for the next phase but that 's OK . And then , a similar conv uh , convention for numbers . So if they say one - eighty - three versus one eight three . Um , and also I 'll be , um , encoding , as I do my post - editing , the , things that are in curly brackets , which are clarificational material . And eh to incorporate , uh , keyword , at the beginning . So , it 's gonna be either a gloss or it 's gonna be a vocal sound like a , laugh or a cough , or , so forth . Or a non - vocal sound like a doors door - slam , and that can be easily done with a , you know , just a one little additional thing in the , in the general format .
PhD G: Yeah we j we just needed a way to , strip , you know , all the comments , all the things th the that linguist wants but the recognizer can't do anything with . Um , but to keep things that we mapped to like reject models , or , you know , uh , mouth noise , or , cough . And then there 's this interesting issue Jane brought up which I hadn't thought about before but I was , realizing as I went through the transcripts , that there are some noises like , um , well the good example was an inbreath , where a transcriber working from , the mixed , signal , doesn't know whose breath it is ,
Grad F: Right .
PhD G: and they 've been assigning it to someone that may or may not be correct . And what we do is , if it 's a breath sound , you know , a sound from the speaker , we map it , to , a noise model , like a mouth - noise model in the recognizer , and , yeah , it probably doesn't hurt that much once in a while to have these , but , if they 're in the wrong channel , that 's , not a good idea . And then there 's also , things like door - slams that 's really in no one 's channel , they 're like it 's in the room .
PhD A: Yeah .
Grad F: Right .
PhD G: And uh , Jane had this nice , uh , idea of having , like an extra , uh couple tiers ,
Grad F: An extra channel .
Postdoc B: Yeah . I 've been I 've been adding that to the ones I 've been editing .
PhD G: yeah . And we were thinking , that is useful also when there 's uncertainties . So if they hear a breath and they don't know who breath it is it 's better to put it in that channel than to put it in the speaker 's channel because maybe it was someone else 's breath , or Uh , so I think that 's a good you can always clean that up , post - processing .
Postdoc B: Yeah .
PhD G: So a lot of little details , but I think we 're , coming to some kinda closure , on that . So the idea is then , uh , Don can take , uh , Jane 's post - processed channelized version , and , with some scripts , you know , convert that to to a reference for the recognizer and we can , can run these . So when that 's , ready you know , as soon as that 's ready , and as soon as the recognizer is here we can get , twelve hours of force - aligned and recognized data . And , you know , start , working on it ,
Postdoc B: And PhD G: so we 're , I dunno a coup a week or two away I would say from , uh , if if that process is automatic once we get your post - process , transcript .
Postdoc B: Mm - hmm . And that doesn't the amount of editing that it would require is not very much either . I 'm just hoping that the units that are provided in that way , {nonvocalsound} will be sufficient cuz I would save a lot of , uh , time , dividing things .
PhD G: Yeah , some of them are quite long . Just from I dunno how long were you did one ?
Grad E: I saw a couple , around twenty seconds , and that was just without looking too hard for it , so , I would imagine that there might be some that are longer .
PhD G: Right .
Postdoc B: Well n One question , e w would that be a single speaker or is that multiple speakers overlapping ?
Grad E: No . No , but if we 're gonna segment it , like if there 's one speaker in there , that says " OK " or something , right in the middle , it 's gonna have a lot of dead time around it ,
PhD G: Right . It 's not the it 's not the fact that we can't process a twenty second segment , it 's the fact that , there 's twenty seconds in which to place one word in the wrong place
Grad E: so it 's not Postdoc B: Yeah .
Grad E: Yeah .
PhD G: You know , if if someone has a very short utterance there , and that 's where , we , might wanna have this individual , you know , ha have your pre pre - process input .
PhD A: Yep . Yeah . Sure .
Postdoc B: That 's very important .
PhD A: I I I thought that perhaps the transcribers could start then from the those mult multi - channel , uh , speech - nonspeech detections , if they would like to .
PhD G: And I just don't know , I have to run it .
Postdoc B: In in doing the hand - marking ?
PhD G: Right .
PhD A: Yeah .
Postdoc B: Yeah that 's what I was thinking , too .
PhD G: Right .
Postdoc B: Yeah .
PhD G: So that 's probably what will happen , but we 'll try it this way and see .
PhD A: Yeah .
PhD G: I mean it 's probably good enough for force - alignment . If it 's not then we 're really then we def definitely
PhD A: Yeah .
PhD G: uh , but for free recognition I 'm it 'll probably not be good enough . We 'll probably get lots of errors because of the cross - talk , and , noises and things .
PhD A: Yep .
Professor C: Good s I think that 's probably our agenda , or starting up there .
Postdoc B: Oh I wanted to ask one thing , the microphones the new microphones ,
Professor C: Yeah ? K .
Postdoc B: when do we get , uh ?
Grad F: Uh , they said it would take about a week .
Postdoc B: Oh , exciting . K . K .
Professor C: K .
PhD D: You ordered them already ?
Grad F: Mm - hmm .
PhD D: Great .
PhD G: So what happens to our old microphones ?
Professor C: They go where old microphones go .
Grad F: Um PhD G: Do we give them to someone , or ?
Grad F: Well the only thing we 're gonna have extra , for now ,
PhD G: We don't have more receivers , we just have Grad F: Right , we don so the only thing we 'll have extra now is just the lapel .
PhD G: Right .
Grad F: Not not the , bodypack , just the lapel .
PhD G: Just the lapel itself .
Grad F: Um , and then one of the one of those . Since , what I decided to do , on Morgan 's suggestion , was just get two , new microphones , um , and try them out . And then , if we like them we 'll get more .
PhD G: Mm - hmm .
Professor C: Yeah .
PhD G: OK .
Grad F: Since they 're they 're like two hundred bucks a piece , we won't , uh , at least try them out .
PhD D: So it 's a replacement for this headset mike ?
Grad F: Yep . Yep .
Professor C: Yeah .
Grad F: And they 're gonna do the wiring for us .
PhD D: What 's the , um , style of the headset ?
Grad F: It 's , um , it 's by Crown , and it 's one of these sort of mount around the ear thingies , and , uh , when I s when I mentioned that we thought it was uncomfortable he said it was a common problem with the Sony . And this is how apparently a lot of people are getting around it .
PhD D: Hmm .
Grad F: And I checked on the web , and every site I went to , raved about this particular mike . It 's apparently comfortable and stays on the head well , so we 'll see if it 's any good . But , uh , I think it 's promising .
Postdoc B: You said it was used by aerobics instructors ?
Grad F: Yep . Yep , so it was it was advertised for performers
Postdoc B: That says a lot .
Grad E: Hmm .
Professor C: For the recor for the record Adam is not a paid employee or a consultant of Crown .
Grad F: and Excuse me ?
Postdoc B: Oh .
Professor C: I said " For the record Adam is is not a paid consultant or employee of Crown " .
Grad F: Excuse me ?
PhD G: Right .
Grad F: That 's right .
PhD G: However , he may be solicited after these meetings are distributed .
Grad F: Well we 're using the Crown P Z
Professor C: Yeah .
PhD G: Don't worry about finishing your dissertation .
Grad F: These are Crown aren't they ?
Professor C: Right .
Grad F: The P Z Ms are Crown , aren't they ?
Professor C: Yeah .
Grad F: Yeah , I thought they were .
Professor C: You bet . You bet .
Grad F: And they work very well .
PhD G: Yes .
Professor C: So if we go to a workshop about all this this it 's gonna be a meeting about meetings about meetings . OK . So .
Grad F: And then it we have to go to the planning session for that workshop .
Professor C: Oh , yeah , what Which 'll be the meeting about the meeting about the meeting .
PhD D: Oh , god .
Grad F: Cuz then it would be a meeting about the meeting about the meeting about meetings .
Postdoc B :
Professor C: Yeah ? Just start saying " M four " . Yeah , OK .
Grad F: Yeah . M to the fourth .
Professor C: Should we do the digits ?
Grad F: Yep , go for it .
Professor C: OK .
PhD A: S s
Grad F: Pause between the lines , remember ?
Grad E: Excuse me .
Grad F: OK .
Professor C: OK .
PhD G: Huh .