C: I what I 'm thinking is um obviously we can do the we can we can choose any sixteen bits from the twenty four , so we can just have different gain things that we use you know per channel .
B: Right .
B: Yeah , so we might wanna see if maybe the low sixteen bits on the P Z Ms are better than the middle sixteen bits .
C: Yeah .
C: I think  probably the bottom four bits are not any good ,
B: Regardless , yeah .
C: Right ?
C: Although you know it claims they are .
C: But probably the B: W I was just noticing on the on the there 's a view meter , software view meter and the PZM gain is real low .
A: Yeah , so I think initially we should take up more space until we 've analyzed this and get a better sense of it
B: So .
A: because uh we don I mean we 're not talking about forty or fifty hours at this point
C: Mm - hmm .
B: Yeah .
A: we 're talking about a half hour of of speech
B: Yep .
A: and so uh we should look at this carefully
C: Yeah .
A: but A: Yeah , I was interested when I saw the twenty - four on there .
C: Oh , yeah !
A: Wow , I mean that 's probably eight bits of noise .
C: Oh yeah !
A: Yeah .
A: So .
B: Yeah , that 's right .
B: We 've got lots of bits of noise .
C: These theories things are pretty amazing .
A: Yeah .
C: And And there 's help help they seem they seem good though they seem to be
A: It 's some sort of oversampling thing I imagine ,
A: right ?
A: Didn't we already get that ?
C: Oh , God knows .
C: Yeah , yeah .
A: Cuz you you can't have uh component tolerances that are uh sixteen million one in sixteen million parts ,
C: Right .
A: so .
C: Right .
B: Right the other other thing another issue is just getting a sound card up here .
B: You know , I assumed that we could just put a sound blaster in if we want sound output .
C: That that card that machine 's got sound They 've got a sound blaster built into it .
B: Oh , it 's just not working .
C: I just I just disabled it cuz I wanted to find out how well the sound infrastructure would deal with both at once
B: OK .
C: but I think yeah , that 's , uh  probably it will be fine .
B: Yeah , that way we don't we can't listen to it on this machine .
A: I 'm s
C: There 's no ,
A: Oh !
C: For a couple of reasons .
C: Well , but the @ @  There are two ways we could listen to it .
C: There 's a sound there 's actually sound output built into this thing .
A: Yeah .
C: But the driver I haven't the driver may not support it yet .
C: And then there 's also the sound or the sound card built in .
A: Hmm .
C: But I don't know how to I don't know how the operating system would like having two sound cards .
A: But we can FTP stuff over ,
A: right ?
B: Right .
A: So it 's connected .
C: Yeah .
B: And we 've looked at it so we know it 's working .
B: I mean , you can see the little squiggles , and it looks like speech so
C: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
B: You just can't listen .
A: Yeah .
A: OK .
A: Um .
A: One suggestion I have is that um I think this  maybe we should just read some more you made more of these ,
A: right ?
B: Right .
A: I think we should read some more because because this is very f
B: OK .
A: we  we need to to work the the the uh the talkers more
A: because we 're not gonna have that many meetings
B: Mm - hmm .
A: and this is a pretty tiny amount of data .
B: Mm - hmm .
A: So maybe we should do another number list and B: Well right I I just did ten per page I could easily do twenty per page .
B: It 's just a question of uh of how much uh annoyance I wanted to put uh people going to meetings through .
A: Yeah .
A: Well this is us .
A: We 'll have a fair amount of annoyance
B: Mm - hmm .
C: Yeah .
A: yeah I think
A: uh .
A: So , can we do we do another set ?
B: Sure .
A: Are we are we are we sort of C: Sure .
A: we talked out about what we 're C: Well no , OK , the question I still have about what we 're going to do is what is what eh OK , so we can get the equipment set up so that basically we 're in a situation where we can  with , you know , ten minutes of preparation , we can bring nine people in here and do a multi channel recording .
A: OK .
A: Right .
C: Um .
C: What are wh When are we Are we going to do that ?
C: Who are they going to be ?
C: What meetings are we going to record ?
B: Us , to begin with .
C: So which which meetings What meetings do we have ?
B: I think that 's the intention .
C: I mean like " us " being the Meeting Recorder people or " us " being anything that speech local does .
B: Well , I think  I think , um , certainly us , Meeting Recorder .
C: Yeah .
B: Um , us other groups .
B: It just depends on how many meetings we 're we 're having .
B: Um .
B: Jerry also said it would be he would be willing to have his group , some of the AI meetings do it as well .
C: And we should have like we should have Decoder meetings and stuff .
B: And uh
B: Exactly exactly .
B: I think there are enough incidental meetings for us to to do this .
B: And if we can get it set up so it is convenient enough , um , then you can just do spontaneous meetings as well .
C: Yeah , I mean that 's the thing .
C: It 's OK to g
C: Right .
B: Which I 'm interested in .
B: I mean , that 's one of the things , the whole reason I want a PDA as opposed to a wired room is for spontaneous meetings .
C: Yeah .
C: Right .
C: Well , we 've got to make it really really easy to start it going then in that case .
B: Right .
C: Cuz that that 's the real goal .
B: That 's right .
B: That 's why I put ten on here instead of thirty or forty or fifty .
C: Right .
C: But I mean if we if we want Jerry 's group to use it then we probably @ @ won't ask them to read any numbers ,
C: right ?
B: Right .
C: Cuz .
B: Well , I I bet they would be willing to do it the first few times , just for the novelty .
C: Yeah .
C: Yeah .
A: I think they would .
A: And also he 's he 's he 's got at least one woman .
C: That 's great .
B: Oh , that 's a good point !
C: I know .
A: And we 're we have a little problem of no women ,
B: Boy , that 's abs I had never I hadn't even thought about that .
C: I know , it 's a disaster .
A: Yeah , well , when L when Liz uh Shriberg starts coming , then there 's another woman although she B: Oh , man !
C: It 's alright
C: she doesn't mind as long as we don't video her ,
A: Yeah .
C: right ?
A: Ah , that 's right .
A: That was it .
A: So .
B: Maybe we should have the reading group here and force Jane to come .
C: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
A: No , well , actually we could have Jane uh Jane 's interested and curious about this stuff so she could attend one of B: Mm - hmm .
C: Yeah .
A: probably not the decoder meeting but some of the other stuff she would be interested enough and have her read C: We could we could have the reading group in here .
B: Yeah , I mean it 's a different style .
C: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
C: I mean .
B: But I think that 's alright .
C: Yeah , it 's great .
A: Yeah .
B: Um ,  we were joking about having lunch up here but eating with the microphones B: Um , I had another question briefly about transcription .
C: OK .
B: So are we going get an external service or are we gonna do it ?
B: I mean who 's gonna generate the transcripts ?
A: Um I think that one of the neat things about having this little pilot thing from today is we should try it a couple different ways ,
B: Mm - hmm .
A: so we should try to do it internally ,
A: maybe ask ask Jane if we could get her to do it or or or have her supervise a linguistics student or somebody
C: Mm - hmm
B: Mm - hmm .
A: and uh see how long it takes , and you know , multiply out the cost ,
A: and then send send the same thing out , or maybe split it in halves or something something like that to a to an outside service
C: Mm - hmm .
A: and uh see what that costs and how much hassle that is .
B: Right .
A: And then we can assess it .
B: Yeah , the the problem of course is that it 's you know , in in this meeting it 's three four five six seven eight , it 's nine transcripts , potentially .
C: Well , Except that you wouldn't transcribe them all individually ,
A: No .
C: right ?
C: You would send I mean , uh a transcriber is used I mean , I don't know , assume presumably a transcriber transcribes a single meeting ,
A: No .
C: right ?
C: And so they they just have to indicate that the speaker changes .
A: Right .
A: This was this was the point of having near zero skew .
C: Right ?
A: Right ?
A: So you just pick one , with the best sounding one , and give it to somebody and they transcribe it .
B: Oh , you 're right , yeah , yeah , yeah .
C: Yeah .
B: Right .
B: So the only thing we 'll have to be careful with is that they 're B: well , what are they listening to ?
C: So so they they 're gonna they 're gonna have to make speaker assignments or something like this .
B: They 're going to have to make speaker assignments ,
B: and wh and which recording are they gonna listen to ?
C: For one of one of @ @ .
C: Or we could mix we could mix the the headset mikes , you know , just to make a single high q high quality A: Right .
C: and we could do and we could do all kinds of weird things like having you know squelch so that you only , you know you only you cut it out when there 's no energy .
B: Oh , that would be interesting .
C: So you don't @ @ noise .
B: Mm - hmm .
A: Yeah , you could do fancy things , but it seems like that 's enough .
B: Yeah .
C: Yeah .
C: I mean there 's it 's If we if we do something which is have a little bit of human input to get the words then we can leverage that a lot by some clever cross thing to figure out which channel they really belong to and stuff like this , probably .
B: OK .
B: Mm - hmm .
B: Yet .
B: So that I mean , that 's one chunk of work and just segmenting for this is gonna be another chunk of work .
B: Um .
C: Yeah .
C: And Yeah .
C: As much work as you want .
A: Yeah But uh I don't know .
A: This meeting , so , say it 's maybe going to be a half hour or something ,
A: and  and uh we 've heard estimates ranging between ten and twenty times uh real time to do this kind of transcription
C: Yeah .
A: um so you know in in principle then it 'll take somebody a day for somebody to deal with this .
C: Mm - hmm .
C: Wow .
C: Yeah .
A: And uh we 'll see which one of those seems closest to right
A: and if they  ramped up , if towards the end it was faster you know , get some sort of sense from them uh from whoever does it
B: Mm - hmm .
A: and um then uh like I say , check it out with an external service and see if it 's faster , cheaper , better , worse , whatever .
B: Right .
A: Then we 'll go from there .
B: Mm - hmm .
B: Yeah , one of the things I was thinking with transcript is that if we take the near field and we do an initial recognition pass , is it easier for a transcriber to correct a transcript , if the near field mike does a reasonably good job ?
C: Hmm .
B: I bet it isn't , unless it 's really close to right .
C: Yeah .
C: I have just because it 's such an un
C: The transcribing is sort of something I can imagine doing , whereas having this distraction of having sort of something that looks like it might be right but has got some <comment> very wrong bits in is sort of a less less easy thing to do .
B: Right .
B: Some errors , yeah .
A: I don't know .
A: I do I don't know the answer to that .
C: I 'm sure the professional transcribers obviously don't have any use for A: I don't know .
C: Yeah Yeah , that 's true ,
A: Well , I mean there 's this Cyber Transcriber service ,
A: right ?
C: that 's true .
A: And at least supposedly the way they work is by feeding them what is the output of the recognizer .
C: Yeah , by fixing up transcripts .
A: So maybe it depends on what the software tools are like .
C: Yeah , but Yeah .
A: If it 's you know , if they can easily flip through stuff and get to the right thing ,
A: or do you point ,
A: or I don't know .
A: There 's supposed to be some out out out - of - work shepherders or something in Scotland but C: Yeah .
A: Ah , the internet .
C: They should all be in India right now .
C: That 's where the good , but the cheap English speakers are .
A: Yeah .
B: Not in Scotland .
A: Inexpensive .
C: I 'm sorry , yeah .
B: Not in Scotland .
C: Well they don't speak such clear English
B: They they sheep they s they they speak cheap English ,
B: right ?
A: OK so we 're degenerating ,
A: right .
A: Are are are we done with uh MR business ,
C: Yep .
B: Sure .
A: or ?
A: I mean what what 's maybe we should what are our action items ?
A: So there 's there 's the continuing process of cleaning up the stuff and making it easier to do that .
A: There 's taking the results of this meeting and putting it in some kind of decent form ,
A: probably getting some kind of single channel merged sum data or something so that you can give a simple sound file of some sort to a transcriber to deal with it rather than this massive thing .
C: Mm - hmm .
B: Mm - hmm .
C: Mm - hmm .
A: That 's a little bit of stuff to do .
B: Right .
A: Right ?
B: And then do some segmenting and recognition initial recognition would be interesting to do .
A: Yeah , although it it it it may be separating out these numbers from the rest .
B: That 's what I mean .
A: Yeah .
A: And then
B: Yeah just doing a digits on it uh , connected digits .
A: Yeah and uh
A: Right .
A: So , with this next B: You wanna read ?
A: Sure .
A: OK .
A: How many more you got ?
B: Oh I on I did ten but I can I have a script to generate them automatically .
A: Well , let 's do some more while we got them here .
C: Wow .
B: OK .
C: What fun it is .
A: Well , you know , it 's not , but
C: It 's interesting that um it m it 's not clear whether it 's better to have them written as as words or or figures .
C: But , of course , to get zero and " O "s distinguished we you have to do it .
B: That 's why ,
B: yep .
C: But it 's kind of weird to read .
A: Yeah , there 's just two more .
A: uh
B: Go ahead .
A: OK .
A: So .
C: Thanks .
B: OK , go ahead and read it and then fill it out .
A: OK .
C: OK .
A: OK .
A: I 'd say we 're done .
B: OK .
C: Oh , I wonder I wonder if we ran out of disk space yet .
A: So , is it it 's going to disk ,
A: or is this A: And how how much disk do we have ?