Meetings - Recording

[SOSAGES]

Hi all,

some guys i work with have a lot of 2v2 meetings and a load of different aspects on a certain project are talked about in the meeting room, i have heard them say a million times "what did i say last week" "i dunno" so i said to them i could probably setup a pc to record what they are saying into wav/mp3 format and then get some software to change that speach into a document so they can search it easily etc.

but a pc is big and more work than it needs to be and expensive.

so could anyone suggest to me a small device that could record 2 or 3 people chatting and i can easily get the "file" it stores and store it where i like and compress it if needed, maybe something the size of an ipod we can whip out and chuck on the table press record and job done then use usb to tranfer the file to the network.

If that cant be done could anyone suggest a suitable recording setup i have a spare sb live and a microphone but no dedicated recording software anyone suggest any?

Basically im looking for a way of recording meeting discusions digitally.

Thanks if anyone can help

[altis]

This any good?
http://www.olympus.co.uk/consumer/voice/home.cfm

[paulyoung666]

right heres a start for you Sony Dictation Machines ICD-P17 this is the link for it , scroll down the page , as for software , wait one

how about viavoice , its a start anyway

[SOSAGES]

nice - anyidea what format they normally record in? hopefully not .wav as they are always large files.

do they offer a way to "get at" the files? via usb etc? *reads more*

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by SOSAGES

<snip>maybe something the size of an ipod <snip>

An iPod? and Belkin voice recorder!

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...More=T7419LL/A

[MovedGoalPosts]

Anyone who has tried to use voice recognition software will be all too painfully aware of the need to train it to recognise the individual's speech oddities. It can take for ever to develop accuracy. And that is when you have good sound quality of a mike ideally positioned to the speakers mouth. Background noise is a killer.

Given the above, I really doubt that any file recorded by a PC, tape recorder, or some other player would be of good enough quality, unless the individuals were miked up. Even then the background noise from other partitipants will interfere. If there is only one file for many users, the voice software is going to have great difficulty making sense of it all. I fear you will end up with garbage.

I suspect the better discipline is to get these bods to nominate one of themselves to be tasked to take minutes. Either that or get a secretary good at shorthand to sit in.

[Matth]

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...subcat_uid=596

Just in case that mucked up...

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...id=58927#pinfo - 128Mb ADPCM recoring (may be short on capacity)

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=49486 256Mb, MP3 recording, variable quality (quoted as 16 hours at 16Kbit/s voice quality for the 128Mb model, and 2 hours at 128kbit/s line in quality)

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=58961 - the 128Mb model of the same - also a 512Mb available, but even for the 128, the battery will run out before the recording does at voice quality!


PS. I agree with the above - speech recognition of multiple speakers will come out like swahili (unless that's what they ARE speaking).
But the audio recording could be used for transcription - outsourced if you like.

[paulyoung666]

it would be interesting to know how much outsourcing the tapes would cost

[MovedGoalPosts]

Originally Posted by paulyoung666

it would be interesting to know how much outsourcing the tapes would cost

That would just require an audio typist. Again, whether the document you'd get back will be meaning full would depend onthe sunject matter of the meeting. The more technical the less it will be understood. I dictate a lot of building construction reports and the technical words always throw the secretary, leaving big gaps for me to fill in on the draft. If you need a transcription so you know what technical stuff you said .....

[paulyoung666]

Originally Posted by MovedGoalPosts

That would just require an audio typist. Again, whether the document you'd get back will be meaning full would depend onthe sunject matter of the meeting. The more technical the less it will be understood. I dictate a lot of building construction reports and the technical words always throw the secretary, leaving big gaps for me to fill in on the draft. If you need a transcription so you know what technical stuff you said .....

good points again


£10 / hour going by this

[Matth]

£10 per hour, but transcribing a 1 hour (and clear) recording is £50.
Can you talk 5 times faster than they can type?

[Millay]

Surley thats what a PA is there to do, take minutes of meetings etc...