Personalizing Feedback

The latest release of Video Voice, Version 3.0.127, has a new feature sure to be popular among therapists and their caseloads. You now have the ability to personalize operation by recording your own audio prompts for voicing and congratulatory messages specific to those you work with.

Video Voice has two basic prompts for vocalization: "Say" (generally followed by the desired target) and "Speak now."  There are also a number of reward and informational messages, such as "Excellent," "Good job," "Selected model is," "You said").  Pleasant, pre-recorded audios are included, but if you’d rather have your own voice providing these instructions and other feedback, you can easily customize them.

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The audio adjustment options are located in the Configuration Menu, with the Auditory Feedback button. From that sub-menu choose Record My Audios.  However, to make it even easier to access that function, when you sign in with your Therapist ID, Video Voice checks to see if you've already customized any audios. If you haven't, it offers you the opportunity to do so. You can choose to do the recording immediately, asked to be prompted again later, or tell it to leave you alone and you'll do it when you're good and ready. 

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When you go to Record My Audios, you'll see the available pre-recorded audios. Click on one to select it, and Video Voice will play the audio for you. You can then record your own version for any or all, and save them for future use.  After you make and save a recording the text turns blue to let you know it's been modified.  (If you change your mind later, you can always revert to the defaults for the audios, or record new ones.)

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Video Voice will automatically save any recordings you make in your Therapist folder, unless one of your caseload data files is active.  In that case, it asks where you want to the recording:  in your own folder or the individual's. This opens up the personalization options even further. Although the audio recording may be called "Speak now," the actual recording can be whatever you like. You could, for example, ask for a child's attention by using his name, e.g., "Jimmy, talk now!" Likewise, you can customize the reward audios with their names - "Wonderful work, Bobby!"  You can have a different set of audios for each person - it's all up to you!

Therapists tell us that the kids they work enjoy about seeing their names on the screen in rewards, so having the computer talk directly to them as well adds even more excitement to the activities.  (Note:  If multiple therapists share Video Voice on a single computer, each one can have her own personalized sets of audios.)

There's also no reason the recordings have to be in English. Although the text for the prompts and rewards cannot currently be changed, the audio recording can be in any language. Video Voice doesn't know what language is being spoken, nor does it care.  So, if you're using the program with speakers of other languages, you can modify the auditory feedback accordingly.  (And watch for the ability to change text messages, too, in an upcoming release!)

By the way, this customizing option is available in the 30-Day Free Trial as well as the full Authorized User and International/Simplified operating modes. Give it a try for yourself by downloading at www.videovoice.com. Existing Version 3.0 users, you are entitled to the new and improved Video Voice via download, at no additional charge. To check which version you currently have installed, click on the telephone icon at the bottom of the Startup or Main Menu. If your version is lower than 3.0.127a, it's time to update!

Personalizing audios is just one of the ways you can customize Video Voice to satisfy your individual preferences. There are lots more, and we'll be talking about them in another post soon - stay tuned. Meanwhile, have fun making your own audio recordings and watching the smiles from your caseload when the computer calls them by name!


Yours in good speech,

Video Voice Support Team
mv@videovoice.com
1-800-537-2182
www.videovoice.com

More New Features, New Lower Price!

We haven’t posted recently. The reason is that we’ve been busy getting a new release of Video Voice out the door, and we’re pleased to report that Version 3.0.126 is now available for download at www.videovoice.com/vv_curel.htm.

This new version of the software has some great new features and capabilities, as well as numerous improvements to existing ones. And, Video Voice is now available at an even lower price!  Here are some of the noteworthy changes and additions.

Formant Spectral Display

Live F1/F2/F3 Spectral Display

The Formant Multi-Frequency Spectral display provides live feedback on the F1, F2 and F3 frequencies in speech. Previously released in preliminary form, it has now been completely revamped. In addition to smoother display of data, you can now capture "traces" to use as models for sound practice.

The immediate feedback in this display can be very helpful for work on ‘R’ vs ‘OO’ and discrimination of high frequency sounds like ‘S’ and ‘SH’. Give this one a try! (Formant Menu - F3/F2/F1 Multi-Frequency-Spectral) We’ll be back to talk more about using the Spectral display in an upcoming  post, but for now we just wanted to let you know there have been some big changes in that display.

Customized Audio
Version 3.0.126 lets you personalize operation with your own audio recordings of voice prompts, congratulatory messages, and other vocal feedback. Your voice can be the one in prompts for voice production ("Say [target]") and reward messages, and they can be in whatever language you use or prefer. Explore this new capability through the Configuration Menu-Auditory-Feedback options.

New Voice Prompt
Video Voice now indicates readiness for voice input in many games and displays with the prompt "Speak now."  This audio help the speaker know when Video Voice starts "listening," and it's time to turn his voice on.  "Speak now" is one of the prompts that you can customize to your voice.

Localization and Keyboard Language Support
Video Voice has always been "language-independent," even though the user interface is in English. The displays and audio recording don’t know what language is being spoken, just that sound is present. Sound is sound, and all languages of have frequencies that can be visually interpreted. (Okay, maybe not "San," the clicking language used by some African tribes, but they’re not likely to be much interested in using computers for speech practice...)  But speech work with Video Voice in other than English is certainly possible, and in fact the games and displays are being successfully used for speech development and remediation in many countries around the globe.

To support non-English use further, a few months back we introduced the International/Simplified operating mode. This streamlined mode will accept and display characters in all keyboard languages. (Authorized User and Free Trial support Latin-based keyboards only.) Want to show model names in prompts in Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew? No problem! However your keyboard is defined in Windows, Video Voice’s International/Simplified mode will handle it. This gives you the ability to display on-screen text such as user and model names, in the orthographics of your language. In this operating mode, however, data cannot be stored for reuse.

The International/Simplified mode also offers translations of buttons and controls on the therapy and game screens for Spanish and French languages.

The Authorized User and Free Trial modes do support non-English, Latin-based keyboards such as Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, etc. This means your model and user names can contain special, accented characters used in those languages.

Fluency Guide
For those people who work with fluency cases, there’s a new "Solutions" pdf document that offers suggestions on how to use the games and displays to reduce stuttering. (Find it on the Main Menu-Solutions-Fluency pdf)

Big Bad Bug Fix
Some users had reported a lock-up bug in some articulation games, particularly those that do model-matching. It was ugly, causing Video Voice to become unresponsive and require a restart. We’d seen the problem too, but just couldn’t reproduce it reliably. If you can’t make a failure happen in identifiable ways, it’s darned hard to fix. Kind of like when you take your car to the shop and report a strange noise, but of course it doesn’t make that noise so the mechanic can hear it! Anyway, we knew the problem was real, and battled it for several months, but believe we finally have it fixed. (I’m sure you’ll let us know if we haven’t, though!) We’ve made a number of other improvements in the articulation games, too.

New Lower Price!
In these hard economic times, things are tough all over, so we’re doing our part to make Video Voice even more affordable. We’ve reduced the price on all package configurations. To learn more, go to the Pricing page on our web site: www.videovoice.com/vv_price.htm

Why Download the Current Version?
If you’re already a Video Voice user, but haven’t downloaded a new copy of the software in a while, it’s really time to do that now, since there are many additions and major improvements! There’s no charge for software updates, so what are you waiting for?

If you’ve looked at Video Voice in the past, but didn’t make the decision to add this powerful tool to your speech therapy arsenal, it’s time to take another look! With the new games, displays and features to help you streamline your therapy results, it’s a shame not to give it another try. You may be able to start another Free Trial automatically, but if you need assistance with that, we’ll be happy to offer it.

We’ll be back soon with more details on some of these new features and some interesting stories, but for now, please check out this new version of Video Voice. Think you’ll like what you see!

Yours in good speech,

Video Voice Support Team
1-800-537-2182
mv@videovoice.com
www.videovoice.com