Transcription FAQ's

Using Voice It Link and the supplied cable, a connection is made between the connector on the VTR recorder and a serial port on your PC. When the Voice It Link software is launched, a view of all the folders and files on the Internal and Card memory are shown, as well as options for transferring recordings from or to the VTR recorder in compressed .sri, and .wav formats. Recordings may be transferred one at a time or in groups, and are decompressed for playback automatically as messages are played.

The VTR recorder can be configured to have up to 99 folders on each memory, with up to 99 messages per folder, for 4MB memory and above. Therefore, by naming recordings and folders, various organizational configurations can be achieved. Moreover, recordings can be copied to and organized in Windows directories on your PC in any manner desired, so that they can be archived and accessed from the VTR recorder for various purposes.

The VTR recorder uses 3.3 volt SSFDC (Solid State Floppy Disk Card) memory cards, which are formatted in a special way the first time you use them on your VTR recorder (by pressing and holding the Delete button until formatting begins). Any 3.3 volt 2, 4 or 8MB SSFDC memory card may be used with the VTR recorder, but it must first be formatted as previously stated; please note that formatting a SSFDC memory card on a VTR recorder erases all information on the card, so be careful if the card you are planning to use holds pictures or other information thereon. Cards may be available at some camera and electronics stores. The cards must be designated as 3.3V, SSFDC type to work in the recorder.

The compressed sound files from the VTR are stored as .sri files which can only be opened with the Voice It Link software; when played via this software, .sri files are automatically decompressed and played via our Sound Bar within the Voice It Link software. Moreover, the Sound Bar may be "floated" with any other application to play VTR voice files while using other applications. Sound files may also be converted as .wav files and stored on your PC, but it is more efficient to store files in compressed .sri format.

The VTR audio files are highly compressed, but can be copied to the PC as standard .wav files using the features of Voice It Link software; the .wav files are 16 bit files of 6, 8 and 11.025KHz sampling of LP, SP and VT speeds, respectively.

Problems will occur if the VTR is plugged into a comm port that shares an IRQ (interrupt request) with another device. If the VTR is plugged into a fax modem and you receive a fax while the VR-LINK is busy, the connection will be terminated between the software and the computer.

Transferring voice files between the VTR recorder and a PC is done via a cable to the serial port of the PC; transfer times are dependent on the length of recordings being transferred and the serial port speed. For Windows 95, a serial port speed of 115,200 baud is the maximum.

Based on the above, transfer times for Windows 95 machines will be less than 2 minutes to transfer 10 minutes of recordings (at the highest quality VT speed); the entire contents of a 4MB card or internal 4MB VTR memory can be transferred to the PC in under 7 minutes at a baud rate of 115,200.

Decompression of .sri files for playback occurs automatically in the background, so, unlike our VR series recorders, VTR recorders require no extra decompression time for playback.

Voice It Link is designed to work with the supplied cable. If you add extensions, this could result in electrical noise on the cable and communications errors. Use the cable as supplied.

To run the Voice It Link software, a computer running Windows 95 is needed, with a minimum of 10 MB hard drive space available for storage of files, 16 MB of memory and a 100MHz or greater Pentium processor; slower processors will work, but response times for opening recordings will be slower. Extra hard disk space is needed to store .sri or .wav files that are created. If you are installing voice-to-text software, you may need extra speed and capacity. Refer to the software system requirements.

You can assign your user ID via the Voice It Link software, so that all recordings carry your ID. We support third party security codes, but these are available only to developers.