When customers initially move from Olympus ODDS (Olympus Dictation Delivery Service) or they newly sign up to use the OM System ODMS Cloud one thing we point out is that audio can not be downloaded.
There is some context to this. ODMS Cloud is designed to be used by transcription typists from any Windows PC or Mac. To do that a free desktop application is supplied, called ODMS Desktop, which manages the audio playback. This is a change from traditional transcription where an audio file would be shared, usually via email or sometimes a local or cloud drive, for the transcriptionist to load and play in locally installed software.
Many transcriptionists are not keen to change this, it is what they have been used to both in the digital age and the analog age when tapes were used. Plus often investment has been made in specific transcription software. So the default comment by OM System partners is usually no audio can not be downloaded, the context being for use in existing locally installed software for audio playback. But …
Yes You Can Download ODMS Cloud Audio Files But ..
It is technically possible to download dictations from ODMS Cloud that can be played back in locally installed software. However, this is not recommended for transcription and you will see why. Here are the caveats:
- Digital dictation audio files can only be downloaded by and ODMS Cloud Administartor, not by a licenced user with a Transcriptionist or Author role. A maximum of two admins can be allocated to an ODMS Cloud account.
- Only digital dictation audio files with the status of “Finished” can be downloaded as part of a backup process. This means that each audio file will need to have been “Playback” by a typists and it’s status manually set to Finished.
- When an Admin selects to File Backup, each file selected will be downloaded within a seperate zip file. E.g. if you select to File Backup (download) ten audio files, you will download ten seperate zip files, one for each audio.
- The final gotcha. The zip file downloaded as part of the File Backup from ODMS Cloud is encrypted. The only way that the audio can be played is to use the new OM System ODMS R8 software, if you plan to transcribe the audio this would mean using the ODMS R8 Transcription Module (TM). This is locally installed software and is licenced per device, each PC requires it’s own unique licence key. This is also Windows only software. If you just want to convert the audio from .ds2 audio format to an open format such as .wma, .wav or .mp3 then you could use the ODMS R8 Dictation Module (DM) software.
Although ODMS R8 is a paid software application you can install the Dictation Module (DM) or Transcription Module (TM) free for thirty days in trial mode if you want to test the above.
So although technically possible to download audio from ODMS Cloud it is not the recommended approach if you plan to transcribe the audio.
The recommended approach is to use the ODMS Desktop software for transcription which is available for both Windows (free from the Microsoft Store) and macOS (free from OM System’s website).
For a step-by-step guide on how to download and convert audio from ODMS Cloud, including screenshots please review this blog post on the Dictate Australia website.