When Sounds Compete

In this episode, I wanna talk about another side of voice control - it may be ab and work with scroll  or go to sleep well and individual files in a folder le to do some wonderful things, but there are some programs where voice control it's not able to do a really good job - not because it is inefficient - far from it - but voice control deals with the human voice and doesn't play well with such programs that emphasize sound such as YouTube and GarageBand.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello, welcome back to Celebrate Creativity, and this is episode 623, When Sounds Compete. In this episode, I want to talk about another side of voice control. It may be able to do some wonderful things, but there are some programs where voice control is just not really able to do a very good job. Not because it is inefficient, far from it. But voice control deals with the human voice and doesn't play well with such programs that emphasize sound, such as YouTube and Garage Band. Let's start with YouTube. Now, like most people, I really enjoy YouTube, but soon found out that it started doing some wonky things when you were trying to use it with voice control. You see, when voice control would hear a narrator and a video on YouTube saying something like, go to sleep or wake up, the computer would think that it was a voice control command. Now, if you are going to use voice control with YouTube, I would suggest using a grid to find your way around. Otherwise, I just wouldn't use voice control with YouTube at all. I know when I use YouTube, I always say somewhere, uh, or maybe somebody in the room will say, go to sleep. So voice control ignores what a person in a video might be saying and simply goes to sleep. Now, the other program I want to talk about that does depend a great deal on sound is Garage Band. Ideally, it would be nice to be able to completely use Garage Band with voice control, but if you stop and think you don't want to record the music or podcast that you're interested in, uh, well, as well as record the voice control commands. And if you find some reason that you're reading the script from a pages document and recording it with voice control on, the script will mysteriously scroll up and down in random movements that don't make any sense at all. So I always try to turn voice control off before recording anything, such as this podcast episode with Garage Band. That is, if I remember to turn it off, which I often forget. Well, here's a way to get around it. This sounds kind of complicated. Now, first I use voice control dictation, something that we'll examine in a great deal more detail in the next episode, and I'll use voice control dictation to dictate the script. This way I don't have to use my hands at all to have a basic narration in words. Then I copy and paste that transcript into the text section of Garage Band to read while I'm recording the actual podcast episode. Or because I've got two screens, sometimes I'll have uh the garage band playing on one screen and then the pages document on another screen. Now, of course, I might put in some music and a few sound effects as appropriate, uh, but the problem is that the entire script will not fit on just one page, no matter how you do it, with two screens or whatever. The entire script usually takes up at least five divisions in my word processing document. I could read one division, stop recording with one finger on the left hand by pressing the spacebar, and work with the scroll down and scroll up verbal commands, and then say go to sleep and start recording again verbally with one finger on the left hand. Uh the right hand is shot. I then continue my verbal recording. Now all this probably sounds a lot more complicated than it is, but for me the hardest part is just to simply remember all this under the stress of a recording. Instead, I I just don't use voice control at all on Garage Band. I use one finger on a trackpad to go from page to page. Well, join Celebrate Creativity for episode 625 for an examination of what is arguably the most common use of voice control, dictation. And we've got a little bit more to go in this episode. Now I want you to understand that being able to move icons and go around your Macintosh desktop with just verbal commands is certainly impressive, but often the most common use of any computer is communication via verbal means, in other words, through typing. There are dictation programs out there. Some of them advertise themselves as AI, but it seems they all have a rather hefty fee, or at least a monthly subscription, and those $20 or $30 a month can really add up. A basic subscription to ChatGPT, as of this writing, is free. And ChatGPT has the advantage of being able to give you ideas as well as work with the text. And let me repeat here: if in your voice control journey you run into questions, and I'm sure you will, just go over to ChatGPT and you can verbally ask those questions and get answers from a very qualified source. Now, finally, I'd like to end this episode with another look at how you basically turn on voice control in the first place, as well as a look from the standpoint of a first-time user. You can find voice control in the accessibility menu. When using voice control, you're effectively instructing the Mac to do a particular thing. For example, you can tell the Mac to open a menu in an application, click an option from a list, or drag items from one designated part of the screen to another, all with voice. It can also apply to practically any application you run on Macintosh without requiring Siri-friendly hooks or other items. Ultimately, it turns your voice into a simulated mouse. Well, now as far as getting started with voice control, first to use it you have to enable it. Duh! Naturally, it's within the accessibility section of system preferences. And here's how to turn on voice control in Mac OS. I'm going back over this for those of you that might have some problems with it. Click the Apple logo in the menu. Then select System Preferences. Select Accessibility. Scroll down to Voice Control in the left-hand sidebar. Click Enable Voice. If required, authenticate with the Mac to confirm that you want it activated. You might not have to do this. Once enabled, a microphone icon will appear on the desktop showing the detected volume of the selected microphone. You can change the microphone by using the microphone drop-down within the accessibility screen, while another drop-down will let you switch between different installed languages that will work with voice control. And I found the best thing to do in this situation is to also go to sound under preferences and crank the microphone that you want to use, crank that baby all the way up. Now you can quickly start and stop voice control detection by saying wake up or go to sleep. Alternately, click the particular option you want on the aforementioned microphone icon. Now as for overlays, another drop-down box called overlay will give you the option to permanently show two different types of overlay, which will be crucial to the voiceover experience. Item numbers. The first option, item numbers, will add a series of numbers next to selectable items on the screen. This can include icons, options within a menu, and individual files in a folder. I mean it's easier to say click eight than click show view options. This is useful as you can instruct the Macintosh using numbers rather than the name of options. And I think the numbers, I mean the names can look pretty big over top of the things that you need to choose. For example, it might be easier to say click 25 than to say click Family Holiday Trip Barcelona 2019-1.jpg and hope to be understood. You've got a lot more room for misunderstandings there. Rather than having it permanently on, you can leave this off and summon the numbers whenever you want by saying simply show numbers. This will automatically appear in menu lists, even if the option isn't selected. And as far as a numbered grid, well the other main overlay option, numbered grid, creates a grid that covers the entire Macintosh desktop, including applications. Each grid space is numbered, with the idea being that it can be used to select specific points in the desktop like you would a mouse. And instead of being on permanently, which would which would make it look kind of busy, you can ask the Macintosh to show grid to bring it up temporarily or alternately show window grid to limit it to the currently active window. But I just basically stick with show grid to make it simpler. You can use grid numbers to say where on the screen you want to click. If you say a grid number, then the Macintosh will subdivide the cell down into a smaller grid, which you can then again say a number within to narrow down further until the required area is selected. To help see the smaller grid, you could say zoom, then the cell number to zoom into that area. To select an item in a cell, narrow down to it and then say click. If you want to drag an item, you can use the drag command, such as drag 38 to 2. If you want to see the grid without numbers, state hide numbers. To hide the entire grid overlay, say simply hide grid. Now for dictation, if you're using if you're using a word processor or another application where text is involved, you can naturally use dictation within voice control to say sentences. Kind of like Siri dictation for messages, you can make a statement and it is interpreted and inserted into a document or a text box. Before dictating, make sure that you've selected the application or text box in a place where text can be edited. You can add punctuation to a sentence by simply saying period or question mark. Emoji can also be added by saying the emoji's name, along with formatting such as bold that or capitalize that. I just imagine now if I had voice control on right now, they would be moving all over the place, especially when I said these commands. You can select text verbally by saying something like select previous word, though this can also apply to paragraphs and sentences. Move up a sentence or move up a paragraph can quickly move the cursor around within a document. Deletion is also available, such as delete all to wipe a document, or delete that to remove the last thing you uttered. And if you want to replace text, you say replace, followed by the words you want to change, followed by with, then the words you want to use instead. For example, replace 10th birthday with 11th birthday. As well as treating voice control as a mouse, you can also ask it to perform from a very long list of commands. You can bring up a list of commands that uh you can use straight away by stating show commands. And then you'll see the list is well is rather long. It's pretty extensive, including opening and closing applications by name, creating and saving documents, selecting different fields in a form, and various ways of clicking, selection, and deletion. Go over these, spend some time really getting into them, and I think it's going to really help your voice control journey. The list also includes lots of fine control options, such as moving the cursor in a direction and by a specific number of pixels. And that's when you know you're really arriving. You can bring up a quick list of commands at any time, and you can even create your own custom versions. If you want to see alternate versions, you can click the commands button within the accessibility menu. Select an item from the list, and it will show all of the different ways you can say a command for Mac OS to interpret it correctly. And if you're getting repeated misinterpretations of a command, you can disable the command in the same menu by unchucking unchecking the box next to it. The same menu also enables you to set up custom commands. For example, you could set the command visit Apple Insider to open up a browser window. Let me end, yes, I'm gonna finally end here, by saying how you can add custom voice control commands. First, open the voice control preferences. Click commands, click the add button, which is the plus symbol at the bottom left corner. Enter the command you want to use in the when I say box. If required, select the designated application in the while using drop-down. This will limit the command to work only in a specific application if selected. In the drop-down box for perform, select the kind of action you want to do. If asked, add any extra requested information for the command. Now I know this has been a lot of information, but if you really get into voice control, uh, well, there will come a time when it will just come across the second nature. And for the next and final episode in this series, I want to get back to dictation and concentrate on some of the rules of what you need to do to sit there in your easy chair and dictate words and sentences just using your voice. Thank you for listening to Celebrate Creativity.