How to: Tune Word Boundaries

Article
08/18/2014

This content is no longer actively maintained. It is provided as is, for anyone who may still be using these technologies, with no warranties or claims of accuracy with regard to the most recent product version or service release.

Use Wave Editor to improve the quality of a recorded prompt by adjusting word boundaries.

Speech Prompt Editor places default word boundaries in a prompt when it creates alignments. Although Speech Prompt Editor implementation is usually adequate, sometimes manual adjustment of the default word boundaries improves the quality of a recorded prompt. To ensure good default alignments, speak fluently and naturally as you record a prompt. These actions help Speech Prompt Editor make the extractions sound more natural. If a phrase such as "one two three" is spoken quickly during prompt recording, alignments might incorrectly add part of one word to another.

Tuning alignments addresses two issues:

Ensures that word boundaries are correct. Each word must include all of its own phonemes and none of the phonemes for adjacent words.
Ensures that the appropriate amount of silence separates words and phrases.

Listening to Word Boundaries

To listen to a word boundary

Open a prompt database containing scripts with alignments.
In the Transcription pane, double-click the Has Wave icon or the Has Alignments icon to display a .wav file in Wave Editor.
In the word track at the bottom of Wave Editor, click the arrow attached to a word label.

Wave Editor plays that particular word.

Adjusting Word Boundaries

To adjust a word boundary

Open Wave Editor, and then display the .wav file that contains the incorrect word boundary.
In the word track at the bottom of Wave Editor, position the pointer over a blue boundary line.
When the pointer changes to a double-arrow, drag and drop the word boundary to a new location.
Listen to the new word boundaries.

Note

Try to limit physical editing of the .wav files in the .promptdb file to error correction, because the .promptdb file can be used in multiple .prompts files.

Deleting Word Boundaries

To delete a word boundary

Open Wave Editor, and then display the .wav file that contains the unneeded word boundary.
In the word track at the bottom of Wave Editor, position the pointer over the word boundary.
When the pointer changes to a double-arrow, right-click the word boundary, and then click Delete Label.

Note

Moving or deleting word boundaries does not alter the .wav file, but if the word boundaries do not match words in the transcription, the resulting extractions are not usable.

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