C: Well , I think I mean , for that particular issue ther there are known sources where people go to to find these kind of things like the LDC for instance .
E: Yeah ,
E: that 's right .
A: Right ,
A: but but so should we do it in the same format as LDC
A: and what does that mean to what we 've done already ?
B: Right .
B: The B: It 's not so much the actu The logistics of distribution are secondary to preparing the data in a suitable form for distribution .
C: Right .
A: Right .
A: So , uh ,
A: as it is , it 's sort of a ad - hoc combination of stuff Dan set and stuff I set up ,
A: which we may wanna make a little more formal .
A: So .
B: And the other thing is that , um , University of Washington may want to start recording meetings as well ,
A: Right .
B: in which case w w we 'll have to decide what we 've actually got so that we can give them a copy .
D: A field trip .
A: That 's right .
A: Yeah .
A: I was actually thinking I wouldn't mind spending the summer up there .
A: That would be kind of fun .
B: Oh , really ?
A: Yeah .
B: Different for you .
A: Visit my friends and spend some time B: Yes .
A: Well , and then also I have a bunch of stuff for doing this digits .
A: So I have a bunch of scripts with X Waves , and some Perl scripts , and other things that make it really easy to extract out and align where the digits are .
A: And if U d UW 's going to do the same thing I think it 's worth while for them to do these digits tasks as well .
D: Mm - hmm .
A: And what I 've done is pretty ad - hoc ,
A: um , so we might wanna change it over to something a little more standard .
C: Hmm .
A: You know , STM files , or XML , or something .
D: An - and there 's interest up there ?
A: What 's that ?
D: There 's interest up there ?
A: Well they they certainly wanna collect more data .
A: And so they 're applying , I think I B
A: Is that right ?
B: I don't know .
A: Something like that .
A: Um , for some more money to do more data .
A: So we were planning to do like thirty or forty hours worth of meetings .
A: They wanna do an additional hundred or so hours .
A: So , they want a very large data set .
A: Um , but of course we 're not gonna do that if we don't get money .
A: So .
B: I see .
A: And I would like that just to get a disjoint speaker set and a disjoint room .
C: Mm - hmm .
A: I mean , one of the things Morgan and I were talking about is we 're gonna get to know this room really well ,
A: the the acoustics of this room .
D: Including the fan .
B: All about that .
D: Did you notice the fan difference ?
A: Including the fan .
B: Oh , now you 've touched the fan control ,
B: now all our data 's gonna be D: Hear the difference ?
E: Oh , that 's better .
B: Yeah , it 's great .
A: Oh , it 's enormous .
E: That 's better .
D: Do you wanna leave it off or not ?
A: All the others have been on .
D: Yeah , the You sure ?
B: That 's B: Oh , yeah .
D: You  You think that B: Absolutely .
A: y Absolut
D: things after the f then
A: Yeah .
D: This fan 's wired backwards by the way .
D: Uh , I think this is high speed here .
E: Yeah , it 's noticeable .
D: Well , not clear .
D: Maybe it Maybe it isn't .
B: Well it 's well like " low " is mid mid - scale .
D: That 's right .
B: So it could be that it 's not actually wired backwards
B: it 's just that ambiguous .
D: I was wondering also , Get ready . <comment> whether the lights made any noise .
E: Uh - huh .
A: There 's definitely C: Yeah , a little bit .
B: Oh , they do .
A: Yep .
B: Yeah .
A: High pitch hum .
A: Wow .
D: So , do our meetings in the dark with no air conditioning in the future .
A: Yeah ,
A: just get a variety .
E: I think candles would be nice if they don't make noise .
B: Oh , yeah .
A: They 're very good .
C: It would you know , it would real really mean that we should do short meetings when you turn off the <comment> turn off the air conditioning ,
A: Carbon monoxide poisoning ?
D: Short meetings ,
D: that 's right .
D: Or D: Yeah , sort of <comment> r r
C: got to finish this meeting .
D: Tear t Tear your clothing off to stay cool .
C: That 's right .
D: Actually , the a th air the air conditioning 's still working ,
D: that 's just an auxiliary fan .
C: Right ,
C: I see .
C: So ,
A: So
C: um , in addition to this issue about the UW stuff there was announced today , uh , via the LDC , um , a corpus from I believe Santa Barbara .
E: Yeah ,
E: I saw it .
E: I 've been watching for that corpus .
C: Um , of general spoken English .
E: Yeah .
E: Yep .
C: And I don't know exactly how they recorded it
C: but apparently there 's a lot of different styles of speech and what not .
A: Mm - hmm .
C: And E: They had people come in to a certain degree and they and they have DAT recorders .
C: I see .
C: So it is sort of far field stuff .
C: Right ?
E: I I assume so , actually ,
E: I hadn't thought about that .
E: Unless they added close field later on
E: but , um , I 've listened to some of those data
E: and I , um , I 've been I I was actually on the advisory board for when they set the project up .
A: Mm - hmm .
C: Oh , OK .
E: I 'm glad to see that it got released .
B: What 's it sound like ?
E: So it it 's a very nice thing .
A: Yeah , I I wish A: I wish we had someone here working on adaptation
C: S
A: because it would nice to be able to take that stuff and adapt it to a meeting setting .
E: How do you mean do you mean mechanical adaptation or C: But it may be it may be useful in A: You know A: No ,
A: software ,
E: OK .
A: to adapt the speech recognition .
C: Well , what I was thinking is it may be useful in transcribing , if it 's far field stuff ,
A: Mm - hmm .
C: right ?
C: In doing , um , some of our first automatic speech recognition models , it may be useful to have that kind of data
E: Great idea .
C: because that 's very different than any kind of data that we have so far .
A: That 's true .
E: And and their recording conditions are really clean .
E: I mean , I 've I 've heard I 've listened to the data .
A: Well that 's not good , right ?
E: It sounds C: That 's that 's not great .
D: Tr
E: well but what I mean is that , um D: But far field means great distance ?
D: I mean A: Just these .
D: Not head mounted ?
B: Yeah .
D: And so that 's why they 're getting away with just two channels or something ,
D: or are they using multiple DATs ?
E: Um , oh ,
E: good question
E: and I can't ans answer it .
E: I don't know .
A: Well we can look into it .
C: No , and their web their web page didn't answer it either .
E: OK .
C: So I 'm , I uh , was thinking that we should contact them .
C: So it 's that 's sort of a beside - the - point point .
C: But .
A: So we can get that just with , uh , media costs ,
D: Still a point .
C: Right .
A: is that right ?
C: Uh , in fact we get it for free
C: cuz they 're distributing it through the LDC .
A: Oh .
A: Great .
E: Yep .
A: So that would be yeah , that would be something to look into .
C: So , I can I can actually arrange for it to arrive in short order if we 're A: So .
E: The other thing too is from from a A: Well , it 's silly to do unless we 're gonna have someone to work on it ,
A: so maybe we need to think about it a little bit .
E: The other thing too is that their their jus their transcription format is really nice and simple in in the discourse domain .
C: Huh .
E: But they also mentioned that they have it time aligned .
E: I mean , I s I I saw that write - up .
C: Yeah .
C: Maybe we should maybe we should get a copy of it just to see what they did
B: Yeah ,
B: absolutely .
C: so so that we can we can compare .
E: It 's very nice .
A: Yeah .
B: Absolutely .
A: OK , why don't you go ahead and do that then Eric ?
C: Alright , I 'll do that .
C: I can't remember the name of the corpus .
C: It 's Corps - S E: CSAE .
E: Corpus of Spoken American English .
C: S C: Right ,
C: OK .
E: Yeah , sp I 've been I was really pleased to see that .
E: I knew that they  they had had some funding problems in completing it
E: but , um ,
C: Yeah .
B: Uh - huh .
C: Well they 're E: this is clever .
C: Apparently this was like phase one
E: Got it through the LDC .
C: and the there 's still more that they 're gonna do apparently or something like that
E: Great .
C: unless of course they have funding issues
E: Great .
C: and then then it ma they may not do phase two
C: but from all the web documentation it looked like , " oh , this is phase one " ,
E: Super .
C: whatever that means .
E: Super .
E: Great .
E: Yeah , that I mean , they 're really well respected in the linguistics d side too and the discourse area ,
E: and C: OK .
E: So this is a very good corpus .
C: But , it uh it would also maybe help be helpful for Liz , if she wanted to start working on some discourse issues , you know , looking at some of this data and then ,
C: you know A: Right .
C: So when she gets here maybe that might be a good thing for her .
A: Actually , that 's another thing I was thinking about is that maybe Jane should talk to Liz , to see if there are any transcription issues related to discourse that she needs to get marked .
E: OK .
C: Maybe we should have a big meeting meeting .
B: Sure ,
B: of course .
D: That would be a meeting meeting meeting ?
A: A meeting meeting meeting .
C: Yeah .
A: Well this is the meeting about the meeting meeting meeting .
A: So .
C: Oh .
C: Right .
A: Um .
C: But maybe we should , uh find some day that Liz uh , Liz and Andreas seem to be around more often .
A: Mm - hmm .
C: So maybe we should find a day when they 're gonna be here and and Morgan 's gonna be here ,
C: and we can meet ,
C: at least this subgroup .
C: I mean , not necessarily have the U - dub people down .
A: Well , I was even thinking that maybe we need to at least ping the U - dub to see C: We need we need to talk to them some more .
A: you know , say " this is what we 're thinking about for our transcription " , if nothing else .
B: Mm - hmm .
A: So , well w shall we move on and talk a little bit about transcription then ?
C: Yeah .
B: Let 's .
A: OK ,
A: so <comment> since that 's what we 're talking about .
A: What we 're using right now is a tool , um , from this French group , called " Transcriber "
A: that seems to work very well .
A: Um ,
A: so it has a , uh , nice useful Tcl - TK user interface
A: and , uh ,
D: Thi - this is the process of converting audio to text ?
A: Right .
D: And this requires humans just like the the STP stuff .
A: Yes ,
A: yeah .
A: Right , right .
A: So we 're we 're at this point only looking for word level .
A: So all all so what you have to do is just identify a segment of speech in time , and then write down what was said within it ,
A: and identify the speaker .
A: And so the things we that we know that I know I want are the text , the start and end , and the speaker .
A: But other people are interested in for example stress marking .
A: And so Jane is doing primary stress , um , stress marks as well .
A: Um , and then things like repairs , and false starts , and , filled pauses , and all that other sort of stuff , we have to decide how much of that we wanna do .
E: I did include a glo <comment> uh , a certain first pass .
E: My my view on it was when you have a repair then , uh it seems E: I mean , we saw , there was this presentation in the one of the speech group meetings about how A: Mm - hmm .
E: and I think Liz has done some stuff too on that , that it , uh  that you get it bracketed in terms of like E: well , if it 's parenthetical , which I know that Liz has worked on , then uh y y you 'll have different prosodic aspects .
A: Mm - hmm .
B: Hmm .
E: And then also if it 's a r if it 's a repair where they 're like what I just did , then it 's nice to have sort of a sense of the continuity of the utterance ,
E: the start to be to the finish .
E: And , uh , it 's a little bit deceptive if you include the repai the pre - repair part E: and sometimes or of it 's in the middle .
E: Anyway , so what I was doing was bracketing them to indicate that they were repairs
E: which isn't uh , very time - consuming .
A: Mm - hmm .
D: I is there already some sort of plan in place for how this gonna be staffed or done ?
D: Or is it real is that what we 're talking about here ?
A: Well ,
A: that 's part of the thing we 're talking about .
A: So what we wanted to do was have Jane do basically one meeting 's worth ,
E: Mm - hmm .
A: you know , forty minutes to an hour ,
E: As a pilot study .
A: and D: Yourself ?
A: Yeah .
E: Yeah ,
E: as a pilot study .
D: It this is this is like five times real time or ten times real time A: Ten times about ,
A: is and so one of the things was to get an estimate of how long it would take ,
A: and then also what tools we would use .
A: And so the next decision which has to be made actually pretty soon is how are we gonna do it ?
D: And so you make Jane do the first one
A: So .
D: so then she can decide , oh , we don't need all this stuff ,
D: just the words are fine .
E: That 's right ,
E: that 's right .
B: That 's right .
E: I wanna hear about these uh , we have a g you were s continuing with the transcription conventions for s
A: R right ,
A: so so one one option is to get linguistics grad students and undergrads to do it .
A: And apparently that 's happened in the past .
A: And I think that 's probably the right way to do it .
A: Um , it will require a post pass ,
A: I mean people will have to look at it more than once to make sure that it 's been done correctly ,
A: but I just can't imagine that we 're gonna get anything that much better from a commercial one .
A: And the commercial ones I 'm sure will be much more expensive .
D: Can't we get Joy to do it all ?
E: No , that 's A: Yeah right .
D: Is tha wasn't that what she was doing before ?
A: We will just get Joy and Jane to do everything .
D: Yeah ,
D: that 's right .
A: But , you know , that 's what we 're talking about is getting some slaves who who need money
D: Right .
A: and , uh ,
A: duh , again o
E: I object to that characterization !
B: Oh , really .
A: I meant Joy .
A: And so again , I have to say " are we recording "
E: Oh , thank you .
E: OK .
A: and then say , uh , Morgan has has consistently resisted telling me how much money we have .
D: Right .
D: Well , the answer is zero .
A: So .
D: There 's a reason why he 's resisted .
D: But .
A: Well , if it 's zero then we can't do any transcription .
D: Right .
A: I mean , cuz we 're we B: I have such a hard name .
A: I mean , I I can't imagine us doing it ourselves .
D: Well , we already we already  We already have a plan in place for the first meeting .
A: Right ?
D: Right ?
A: N right .
D: That 's E: Well th there is als
E: Yeah , really .
E: There is also the o other possibility which is if you can provide not money but instructional experience or some other perks , you can you could get people to to um , to do it in exchange .
D: Well , i b but seriously , I I mean , Morgan 's obviously in a bind over this
A: Right .
D: and thing to do is just the field of dreams theory ,
D: which is we we go ahead as though there will be money at the time that we need the money .
A: Mm - hmm .
D: And that 's that 's the best we can do .
B: Yeah .
D: i b To not do anything until we get money is is ridiculous .
A: Right .
B: Right .
A: Right .
D: We 're not gonna do any get anything done if we do that .
E: Mm - hmm .
B: Yeah .
A: So at any rate , Jane was looking into the possibility of getting students ,
A: at is that right ?
A: Talking to people about that ?
E: I 'm afraid I haven't made any progress in that front yet .
A: OK .
E: I should 've sent email and I haven't yet .
A: Yeah , right .
A: So , uh D: I d do So until you actually have a little experience with what this this French thing does we don't even have E: And I do have A: She 's already done quite a bit .
E: I have a bunch of hours ,
D: Oh , we have .
D: I 'm sorry .
A: Yeah .
E: yeah .
D: So that 's where you came up with the f the ten X number ?
D: Or is that really just a guess ?
E: Actually that 's the the one people usually use , ten X .
E: And I haven't really calculated C: How fast are you ?
E: How fast am I ?
E: I haven't done a
D: Yeah i
E: s see , I 've been at the same time doing kind of a boot strapping in deciding on the transcription conventions that that are  you know , and and stuff like , you know , how much B: Mmm .
C: Right .
E: There 's some interesting human factors problems like , yeah , what span of of time is it useful to segment the thing into in order to uh , transcribe it the most quickly .
E: Cuz then , you know , you get like  if you get a span of five words , that 's easy .
B: Yeah .
E: But then you have to take the time to mark it .
B: Yeah .
E: And then there 's the issue of it 's easier to  hear it th right the first time if you 've marked it at a boundary instead of somewhere in the middle ,
E: cuz then the word 's bisected or whatever
B: Mm - hmm .
E: and E: And
E: so I mean , I 've been sort of playing with , uh , different ways of mar cuz I 'm thinking , you know , I mean , if you could get optimal instructions you could cut back on the number of hours it would take .
D: D does uh this tool you 're using is strictly B: Yeah .
D: it doesn't do any speech recognition does it ?
A: No .
E: No , it doesn't
E: but what a super tool .
E: It 's a great environment .
D: But but is there anyway to to wire a speech recognizer up to it
D: and actually run it through