| Etranscriptdigital audio and video transcription services |
Audio File FormatsThere
are many audio
file formats. The most popular formats we receive
are dss; wav; mp3; wma and dct (dct is an
encrypted
audio file format). The file formats that we are currently able to transcribe are wav, mp3, dct (encrypted dictation), ra and rm (RealAudio), sri (VoiceIt), dss (Olympus, Lanier and Grundig), au, aif, vox, mp2, vox, compressed wav (including PCM, uLaw, ALaw, ADPCM, CELP, SBC, Windows Media, DSP TrueSpeech, GSM 6.10), msv and dvf files (Sony Recorders), Philips Digital Recorder format, Sanyo Digital Recorder format; as well as audio produced by means of the Express Dictate Windows Dictation Software, Phone-In Dictation Software, Pocket PC Dictation Recorders and Palm OS Voice Recorders. Your choice of recording device will determine which audio file formats you will be using. Many of these devices have both a generic and a proprietary file format option when saving the audio file. If you use an audio file format that is not listed below, please contact us and we will check for compatibility with our software. List of Audio File Formatswav - standard audio file format used mainly in Windows PCs - can be large in size - around 10 MB per minute. mp3 - Recommended for music storage but also suitable for voice audio files. (popular format for podcasts) ogg - an open source format. (mp3 are so much more broadly supported making it difficult to recommend ogg files.) gsm - makes a good compromise between file size and quality. We recommend this format for voice. dct - designed for dictation. It has dictation header information and can be encrypted (often required by medical confidentiality laws). flac - for archiving PCM files where quality is important (eg. broadcast or music use). au - the standard audio file format used by Sun, Unix and Java. aiff - the standard audio file format used by Apple. vox - a very old file type and is pretty poor. raw - it is rarely used except for technical tests. Proprietary Formats supported by NCH® software wma - the popular Windows Media Audio format owned by Microsoft. aac - owned by Dolby. atrac (.wav) - the older style Sony ATRAC format. It always has a .wav file extension. ra - a Real Audio format designed for streaming audio over the Internet. dss - Digital Speech Standard files - Philips, Olympus. msv - a Sony proprietary format for Memory Stick compressed voice files. dvf - a Sony proprietary format for compressed voice files; commonly used by Sony dictation recorders. NCH Swift Sound SpeechMike Executive® SpeechMike Executive can be used in the transcription of .dss and .wav audio files. Power House Dictation Systems |
