Dictation Cool

Dictation is the activity of reading, or saying something to an individual which is writing down every single word. This got enhanced by evolution in technology, with voice recording being used by journalists, and later on extracting text through digital dictation. In this regard, Dictation Cool helps you write from digital dictation files, and even compare with existing text.

The application comes in a lightweight package, which can be easily carried on a thumb drive. More flexibility is provided by the lack of an installer, but you do need to make sure that .NET Framework is already on the computer you want to use it on.

A custom-made interface is wrapped around the set of features. All tools you get to work with are in plain sight to make accommodation easy, and workflow efficient. Since digital dictation files come under common sound files, you can load dictation files under formats like MP3, WMA, WMV, AVI, and MP4.

Playback is initiated from the set of controls, which also include a progress slider to skip through content. Controls can also be handled through hotkeys, with an additional set of options to set start point, repeat when done, and continue from where you left off if closing the application. Unfortunately, there’s no possibility to configure playback speed.

As the audio file plays, you get to write all heard text in the dictation tab. There are no font customization options, except for a size slider. In case you want to compare to an existing text file obtained from dictation, it’s best to paste the original text in the corresponding tab.

Comparison is done at the press of a button, between your input and the original text. Methods let you compare by characters, or strings, with results delivered in a dedicated tab. Color differentiation and highlighting makes it easy to identify all differences.

To sum it up, Dictation Cool combines a plain text editor with a slim audio player so you can manually extract text from digital dictation files. It could have used options to load text files for the original tab, but pasting doesn’t take a lot of time, or effort. With two comparison methods at your disposal, analysis is also in the set of features.