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Alignment

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This content is no longer actively maintained.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.

Speech Prompt Editor associates .wav files with transcriptions in a process called alignment. Alignment matches words in the transcription to words in the .wav file. During alignment, the prompt engine marks the boundaries between words in the .wav file.

Improving Alignment Quality

Edit alignments manually in Wave Editor in case words are truncated or padded with too little or too much silence. If the alignment process fails, a red "x" icon appears in the Has Alignments column. The workaround in this case is to either record the transcription a second time or edit alignments in Wave Editor to match the words in the transcription.

To view alignments in Wave Editor

  • In Wave Editor, double-click the Has Wave or Has Alignments icon for any transcription with a .wav file.

To return to the Recording window

  • In Solution Explorer, double-click the prompt database.

To improve the sound quality of a new prompt

  • Use Wave Editor to edit word alignments.

Speech Prompt Editor recreates alignments every time a user edits transcription text. Brackets, braces, and tag text are not considered transcription text for this purpose. Changes to markup and tags do not trigger a recreation of alignments. Adding or deleting any characters that are not inside braces or are not actually braces or brackets causes a message to appear indicating that text has been changed and alignments must be recreated. Speech Prompt Editor then recreates the alignments.

Forming Alignments with Imported .wav Files

When 8-kHz .wav files are imported, alignment can fail because alignment in Speech Prompt Editor is designed to work with higher quality recordings: 22.05 kHz or 44.1 kHz, not 8 kHz. However, the English telephony engine can align to 8-kHz .wav files.

To solve this alignment issue

  1. In Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, click Options on the Tools menu.

  2. In the Options dialog box, expand Speech Application SDK in the tree view.

  3. Select Languages and Speech Engines, and then select the English telephony engine in the right pane as the default engine.

  4. Click OK.

See Also

Other Resources

Prompt Projects and Databases
Prompt Transcriptions and Recordings