Microsoft Stream transcription: comparing English (Australian) to English (US)

Jul 31, 2018Office 365closed captions, Microsoft Stream, recording, transcription

As mentioned in my previous post, the transcription service in Microsoft Stream for outside the US is not fantastic (that’s an understatement).

A few people in the Steam team have been made aware of my post, so I thought I’d give a practical example to compare against.

Using Microsoft Teams, I recorded myself speaking a paragraph first in my native English (Australian) accent, and then again with an attempt at an English (US) accent.

The paragraph spoken was:

“”The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is an English-language pangram—a sentence that contains all of the letters of the alphabet. It is commonly used for touch-typing practice, testing typewriters and computer keyboards, displaying examples of fonts, and other applications involving text where the use of all letters in the alphabet is desired. Owing to its brevity and coherence, it has become widely known.”

Here’s the video of my recording:

(yes, I acknowledge that I borked a couple of words and my American accent is terrible – so this experiment isn’t perfect)

And here is the transcription:

00:00:07.320 –> 00:00:12.500
Ok, so, I am now recording we’re going to see how well strain does

00:00:12.500 –> 00:00:16.930
a transcription status is when speaking a us english and

00:00:16.930 –> 00:00:21.280
strong so this I’m going to say a quick the

00:00:21.280 –> 00:00:24.630
quick around fox jumps over the lazy dog is an english-language.

00:00:26.010 –> 00:00:30.680
And, rank senses that contains all the letters of the alphabet is commonly

00:00:30.680 –> 00:00:34.430
used the shopping practice fifty typewriters attributable

00:00:34.430 –> 00:00:39.420
to display examples of faults and other applications involving textured uses all that is the

00:00:39.420 –> 00:00:46.380
alphabet is designed audiences for every coherence is become one.

00:00:46.380 –> 00:00:51.680
And, now for the american version with my terrible american access.

00:00:51.680 –> 00:00:54.710
A quick round fox jumps over the lazy dog

00:00:54.710 –> 00:00:59.220
is an english-language new service that contains all letters of the

00:00:59.220 –> 00:01:03.780
alphabet is commonly used for touch typing practice testing typewriters

00:01:03.780 –> 00:01:08.380
and computer keyboard displaying examples of fonts and other applications

00:01:08.380 –> 00:01:12.920
involving text for the use of all levels of the alphabet is desire

00:01:12.920 –> 00:01:19.240
linked with gravity incoherence has become widely known let’s see how well stream works with that.

As you can see the second version where I spoke with a (albeit poor) American accent is considerably better than the first version with my Australian accent.

I look forward to this being fixed, as I tend to record most meetings I have with clients as it saves me having to write copious notes. In person I do this in OneNote as the notes I take relate back to the audio. Unfortunately as the transcription in Stream is so poor I still have to do this for calls via Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business as I can’t rely on being able to search the transcription.

Three things Microsoft Stream needs to sort out, pronto!

Jul 27, 20183 CommentsOffice 365external sharing, Microsoft Stream, Office 365 Video, transcription, Vimeo, YouTube

Microsoft Stream is a fantastic video service built into Office 365 that delivers some absolutely amazing features. However, this blog post isn’t about blowing smoke up Stream’s tailpipe. Most of the times MVPs will sing the praises of various Microsoft products, and sometimes we need to speak up – warts and all. This is one of those posts.

Last week Microsoft announced live events in Microsoft Stream, Microsoft Teams and Yammer. This is a great thing, really, it is. Unfortunately, however a number of the clients I work with and speak to in Australia do not have nice things to say about Stream because of three main reasons which I’ll outline below. To give a bit of context, Stream became Generally Available (GA) on June 20, 2017. It is no Spring chicken.

Office 365 Video

The Office 365 Video service still exists in the platform. As a result, there are two video streaming services in the one platform, and while it has been acknowledged that there will be a migration from one platform to another; there has been nothing further.

The most recent update is from February 2018 on the Microsoft Docs site: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/stream/migrate-from-office-365

Other than the ambiguous 2018 Q1/Q2 (which has come and gone) there is no timeline. We are still waiting. Perhaps this is something the Stream team are keeping under their belt to announce at the Microsoft Ignite conference, so that people will cheer for it (as opposed to the current stance where customers are frustratedly knocking on doors hoping for an answer).

The original post from the Stream team about it and Office 365 Video was written almost two years ago: https://stream.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-stream-and-office-365-video/

External sharing

When Stream was launched in preview there was a screenshot of the sharing window within the product, where “Public” was an option; indicating the ability for people to be able to share videos externally. As this was a feature many users had been wanting from Office 365 Video, it was widely hoped that this feature would come to Stream. However here we are a year later with no external sharing with either named or anonymous users.

Over on the Stream Ideas site a thread shows that the feature is planned, but there’s no timing yet, and the comment is old. The same is applicable for Office 365 Video.

The frustrating thing is that this is possible when sharing a video file from SharePoint or OneDrive, but this does not offer any of the intelligent features of Stream; it’s simple file sharing that plays in a browser.

For now, organisations who want to share videos externally and want some metrics around views as well as providing transcriptions, links, and other integrated features… well… they will have to continue using YouTube or commercial services like Vimeo.

Transcription

The transcription feature of Stream is touted as nothing short of fantastic for the discovery and search of content, because in reality it makes viewing a lot easier as people can jump straight to content based on the words they’re looking for. When it works…

In the land down under, I have not yet met a person who has found the transcription service anything close to useful. Stream became available in Australia on October 31^st, 2017 so one might think that it understood “Australian”. We speak English here, and like many English-speaking nations we have our own accent. Within the country itself there are variations of this accent; something that is not unique to Australia. Here is the first thirty seconds of transcription from a couple of recorded videos I’ve uploaded (either from Teams or Skype for Business):