TRAINING YOUR DRAGON with SCOTT BAKER
Author of "The Writer's Guide to Training Your Dragon"
It’s the last day of Dragon tips!
You can make Dragon significantly more accurate by feeding it documents you have written. In this video you’ll see how to do this in both the PC and Mac versions of the program.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little series – please let me know if there’s anything else you would like to learn about in the future!
Dragon for Mac 5 has serious issues with most of the major word processors on the Mac. In this video, you’ll see what happens when you try to use Dragon in Pages, Google Docs, Scrivener, LibreOffice and Word 2016.
Tip number 5!
If you’ve decided to buy a voice recorder for portable recordings, you might want to use a headset to free up your hands when moving around. Any one will do, right?
Nope.
This quick video shows you the type of headset you will need and how to set it up with your recorder.
Links:
Mini ‘Deadcat’ Furry Windshields: Amazon US (add a small elastic band if it’s loose – be warned, these can tickle the corner of your mouth!)
Dragon requires programs on the Mac to grant it Full Text Control – not a problem in TextEdit but a nightmare in, say, Scrivener. This video shows you how to deal with these issues and stop your cursor going crazy when making corrections.
Another day… another tip!
Smartphones are terrific for recording audio files anywhere that can be transcribed later. The problem? Some built-in mics are patchy and high-quality external headsets guaranteed to be compatible are hard to come by.
The solution? Use a USB mic or headset. This can be handy if you already use a quality USB mic and want to take it with you on your travels. With an OTG cable or Lightning Adapter, you’ll be transcribing with your smartphone at sky-high accuracy levels in no time.
Links mentioned in the video:
Samson GoMic: US – UK
Plantronics Blackwire: US – UK
USB OTG cable: US – UK
Apple Lightning to USB 3 Adapter: US – UK
Time for Day 2 of “7 Days of Dragon Tips”!
If you write Fantasy, Science Fiction or any genre that involves complex character or place names, how do you get Dragon to insert them correctly every single time? This tip shows you how.
Welcome to Day 1 of “7 Days of Dragon Tips”!
Bluetooth microphones are compact, convenient and extremely portable. They free you from messy wires and big, bulky headsets so, in theory, they should be a dream come true for using with Dragon. Right?
If you’ve read my book “The Writer’s Guide to Training Your Dragon“, you’ll know the answer is ‘probably not’. I don’t generally recommend using Bluetooth headsets with Dragon and, in the video above, I explain why.
Don’t get me wrong – there are some exceptions. Sennheiser make a number of excellent Bluetooth headsets that work very well with Dragon (links below for those interested) but they work best when using the ‘Far Field’ algorithm that needs to be manually selected when setting up a Dragon profile. One issue with this? It only works with North American accents.
In short, unless you desperately want to use Bluetooth for some reason, you may be better off sticking with a much cheaper (and probably better performing) wired headset.
Check back tomorrow for another tip!
Links: Sennheiser Presence UC – MB Pro 1 – MB Pro 2
