New question type Speech2Text Quality Score

Posted: 3. May 2019 | Author: annaliska | Filed under: Multimedia Insights | 1 Comment

questfox is fully into Speech.

In order to learn more about the quality of the transcriptions possible, we integrated a new speech type with the only job to check for the quality of the audio transcript. The new question type is available under “Multimedia Insights” with the label “Speech2Text Quality Score”.

Integrating the speech-to-text Quality Score allows you to use a simple test for the quality of the audio transcription. The result is the score comes out between zero (no quality) and 1 (perfect quality). The higher the score, the better the quality of the transcript.  Before using live transcription in an interview situation, we recommend to have at least 0.7 in quality or above.

If the quality score falls below 0.5, we recommend to not use Audio transcription features in your project. Reason for a bad score could be the overall sound environment of the recording situation or the poor expression quality of the speech of an individual.

By using questlogix, you can steer a participant through the interview by not allowing voice functionalities in the interview situation.

At the moment we recommend to save the quality score along with the data to learn more about your respondents and their technical setting. Looking at the potential base of users being able to use speech on their device, more than seventy percent of the worldwide internet population should technically be available to participate in such a voice study.  But in reality the feasibility of speech technology falls way behind those wishful numbers. Integrating the quality score will help you understand your speech in research opportunities better.

By the way: we do not record whatever people say under this quality score question. You can change the sample sentence that people should use in this question type into whatever you would like to.

You can also use the outcome as a variable in the ongoing interview by showing the score or using it as a trigger for a questlogix.

Explanation to better understand the Transcription Confidence Score

Score	Rating	To Do
above 0,9	very good	just go on with your project
0,8 – 0,9	good	no need do change anything
0,7 – 0,8	acceptable	reduce background noise
0,6 – 0,7	usable with caution	check microphone
0,5 – 0,6	not acceptable	re-position microphone/person
0 – 0,5	very bad	do not use AUDIO functionality

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How to download the original audio or video files from questfox?

Posted: 26. April 2019 | Author: annaliska | Filed under: Multimedia Insights | Comments Off on How to download the original audio or video files from questfox?

How to download the original audio or video files from questfox?

This post is only valid for the data captured until October 2020. Since November 2020 we will no longer store multimedia files on our servers. Read the details on how to connect your project with your own SFTP client here: https://questfox.wordpress.com/2020/11/01/clients-sftp-server-integration-for-audio-files/

questfox allows you to record audio and video files. Usually these are immediately transcribed and saved as text, but there is also the option to save the spoken word or recorded video as a multimedia file on the questfox server.

It should be noted that the use of multimedia recordings generates huge amounts of data that go far beyond what is common in market research. A 10 second video usually generates more data than the survey of 1000 people answered by click and text.

Of all types of recording, automatic transcripts are saved as text. But it will always be necessary to hear or view the files in their original format. This memo explains how to do this with the questfox Filemanager.

Each page created in the questfox with audio or video files is saved in its own folder, which contains the name of the project in coded form. Within a folder there are then the respective pages in the continuous numbering. So if an audio file is saved on page 5, then it can be found in the folder Q5. The file folders are only created with the first saved Multimedia element. If you still change the folder structure in the running project, even though audio data has already been received, a little caution is required, as questfox always writes into the current folder.

From the folders you can download the files individually or collectively. While this is comparatively easy with audio data, special considerations have to be made especially for video files. Overall, the question is whether the amount of data is too large to be downloaded in a browser session download. Almost every browser lets you down in case of hundreds of megabytes. For these cases, we offer a separate access to the files, which is realized with a kind of FTP tool. For the vast majority of users, the download is readily possible.

So here’s the way to the audio data of your project:

At the top level, select the Project Space and select the File Manager

Click on the folder “Survey Uploads”

There select the project. To do so one must know the questionnaire ID, which is assigned to the folder. The survey ID is the code that can be found behind the questfox link in the project overview (in the red box BID = CODE OF THE SURVEY).

In questfox File Manager there is then a separate folder per ID.

When opening this folder, various folders may be displayed, each of which may contain audio or video data. The arrangement is in the numerical order of the questionnaire.

With a right mouse click you can open the menu and save the data first as Zip and then right click on Download to download it to your device as ZIP. Please note that you must have the appropriate permits from the people who you recorded before using the data in a different context.

If there is little data, usually a whole project can be downloaded at once. With extensive data, there are sometimes difficulties with videos here. In these cases, we offer direct access to these folders via our own tool (similar to ftp). Ask your questfox partner about this feature,

Attention: The data can be so extensive that the browser session does not allow the download and stops without error message.

The file names themselves are coded and contain an indication of the format at the end. Voice stands for voice files. Video for motion picture files.

Depending on the source device different formats are written. questfox currently has the ability to encode in .ogg and .webm.

If you have difficulty playing the files, we recommend the VLC Player, which handles more than just the proprietary formats of some producers. Download at https://www.vlc.de/  

In the hope of enabling new ways of voice and video interviews. Good luck with the new survey options inside of questfox.

Pretty soon there will be an update allowing you to take care of your upload folder on your side. We will offer the option to use your personal SFTP Server.

Update November 2020: This is how you connect to SFTP: https://questfox.wordpress.com/2020/11/01/clients-sftp-server-integration-for-audio-files/

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