Dragon NaturallySpeaking controlling Audacity

[Edgar]

I do a lot of audio editing with Audacity and I used Dragon NaturallySpeaking extensively in the process. I have developed over 30 custom DNS commands for Audacity about half of which directly access menu or keyboard shortcuts and the other half are more extensive command scripts. I have attached the file "DNS commands" (as a .txt file although in reality it is a .XML file; XML files are not allowed for upload -- you will need to change the file extension before importing it into Dragon).

Some of the commands:
clip front
clip end
close top track (will need to be modified to suit your screen resolution in window size)
create new track
end of track
export
export multiple
first label (inserts a label at the beginning)
new project
open metadata editor
play
stop
stop here
play at speed
selection tool
zoom tool
zoom in
zoom in <1-20>
zoom out
zoom out <1-20>
zoom to selection

[Gale Andrews]

I do a lot of audio editing with Audacity and I used Dragon NaturallySpeaking extensively in the process. I have developed over 30 custom DNS commands for Audacity about half of which directly access menu or keyboard shortcuts and the other half are more extensive command scripts.

Hi Edgar

I may be being obtuse but can you explain the purpose of this (the DNS web site is pretty threadbare). Do you mean you speak "CTRL+H" to DNS and it then makes Audacity open the Metadata Editor? Or this is a way of using Audacity without having Audacity as the active window?



Gale

[Edgar]

can you explain the purpose of this (the DNS web site is pretty threadbare). Do you mean you speak "CTRL+H" to DNS and it then makes Audacity open the Metadata Editor? Or this is a way of using Audacity without having Audacity as the active window?

Hi Gale!

Dragon and Audacity are both running, I speak "open metadata editor" and it opens, I navigate through the fields by saying "tab" then saying the relevant data (or another "tab" to bypass the field) then "OK" to close the dialog; I say "new project" and a new project window is opened; I say "first label" and the cursor jumps to the track start, a label is inserted and the cursor is on the label field ready for me to say the text of the label.

This is not an ad for DNS; it is an expensive program; I was really hoping to find others who use both DNS and Audacity so we might swap commands. MS's built-in speech recognition (now that it has the ability to run macros) might even do this job.

[Gale Andrews]

can you explain the purpose of this (the DNS web site is pretty threadbare). Do you mean you speak "CTRL+H" to DNS and it then makes Audacity open the Metadata Editor? Or this is a way of using Audacity without having Audacity as the active window?

Dragon and Audacity are both running, I speak "open metadata editor" and it opens, I navigate through the fields by saying "tab" then saying the relevant data (or another "tab" to bypass the field) then "OK" to close the dialog; I say "new project" and a new project window is opened; I say "first label" and the cursor jumps to the track start, a label is inserted and the cursor is on the label field ready for me to say the text of the label.

That all sounds as I'd expect. What I'm missing is where the shortcuts come into this. Do you have to tell DNS the Audacity shortcuts you are using?


Gale

[Edgar]

That all sounds as I'd expect. What I'm missing is where the shortcuts come into this. Do you have to tell DNS the Audacity shortcuts you are using?

In short, yes. Here is a script which just sends a spacebar keyboard event:
(I say) play
(it does...)
Sub Main
SendDragonKeys" "
End Sub

another...
(I say) stop here
(it does...)
Sub Main
SendDragonKeys"{shift+a}"
End Sub

Here is something a bit more entailed:
(I say) append second track
(it does...)
Sub Main
SendDragonKeys"{F1}"
SetMousePosition 1, 50, 650
ButtonClick
SendDragonKeys "{ctrl+c}"
Wait .2
SetMousePosition 1, 20, 495
ButtonClick
SetMousePosition 1, 150, 150
ButtonClick
SendDragonKeys"{end}"
SendDragonKeys "{ctrl+v}"
SendDragonKeys "{ctrl+f}"
SetMousePosition 1, 50, 300
ButtonClick
Wait 2
MenuPick "Analyze"
Wait .5
MenuPick "Silence Finder"
SendDragonKeys "{enter}"
End Sub

What this last does is:
make sure Selection Tool is set (keyboard F1)
click in bottom track to make it is active and all selected (the mouse positions are specific to my display)
copy it all
click in top track, move cursor to end
paste
fit in window
close bottom track
(to aide my workflow...) analyze silence using default values (which I have set to what works for me)