speech to text program?

chez

I have an exam for this online class on monday and this class has about 20-30 hours of lectures in MP3 form that I have to listen to by then.

I listened to the first lecture and it took me twice as long as it should have because this guys voice is really dull and he talks really slow and my mind just wonders off to the point where i realise im not paying attention and i have to go back and relisten to the last 5 or 10 (or 30) minutes of the lecture because i wasnt paying attention and didnt catch a word. At this rate theres no way i can listen to all of the lectures by monday.

So anyway, i was wondering, is there some kind of program that could take an mp3 file and convert it to text so i could just read it? does such a thing exist? google only seems to find text to speech programs. i'm kind of in a tough spot here and any help would be really appreciated.

Reiten

You could try a speech to text voice recognition program. The kind where people speak into a microphone and the text appears. You'd have to set up a microphone taking in the sound from the speakers. The problem is that you're supposed to train them to reduce the errors. You can't exactly ask your lecturer to train the software for you. I think Dragon NaturallySpeak is an example of the software.

I'll be honest, you'll spend more time getting this set up than you would to just bite the bullet and do it the right way (i.e., listen to the tapes yourself).

Gdiguy

you'll probably be better off just finding a way to play them at 1.5x (or even 2x, if he talks super slow) speed; usually it's totally understandable at those speeds

whuppins

I agree. Most speech to text programs like Dragon NaturallySpeaking still rely heavily on training -- for example, setting up a user profile where you read a (software-supplied) sample text so the program can get the idea of how your voice sounds. Or correcting its transcriptions to refine the software's ear for your voice. It's still a very personal, interactive experience and even then, the accuracy is not spectacular. Like Reiten, I imagine that any time and effort spent setting up a speech to text system would be better spent just listening to the lectures. You should really just buckle down and try to pay closer attention.

The new versions of Windows Media Player can play mp3s at double-speed without changing the pitch, right out of the box, if I recall correctly. You might want to try that, or something similar to that if the guy speaks slowly enough.

chez

listening at double speed works great.

thanks for the idea.