coldRead 4+

Almost perfect

Pretty impressed so far with this app. It's super helpful for learning lines and getting off book. I love that it listens out for the cue word before moving to the next line. I would have given it 5stars but for the fact that it is a bit clunky on longer lines. I feel like I will need to break longer speeches up into separate lines otherwise the autocue can't move fast enough. Still a great app and I'm sure it'll keep getting better. Worth the subscription.

Developer Response ,

Thank you very much!
The app will only get better with our frequent updates. Speech recognition improves dramatically with use. Long lines put a lot of pressure on the system, so the quality of speech recognition can decrease, depending on the device you use. This will be improved, by Apple and by us, and I hope the new iOS 14 will get us there even faster.
Please email us if you need help with anything at support@coldreadapp.com. We respond to every email.
Thank you again for taking the time to leave us a review.

Pretty useful, but has big faults and can be improved for much larger success

This app is great for practicing my lines and memorising them- so I use it for that. However, small things don’t work smoothly- like when you go to edit the text of a transcription, if there is too much transcribed, you cannot scroll down to edit the latter portion of the text.

I understand dictation technology isn’t quite perfect yet and the app is limited to dictation tech, but some in-app software updates can help with some problems. For example, an option to have a secondary ‘QUE WORD’ to move to the next line would help with a particular word being misunderstood. Also, an option to use the second to last word as a cue word would help loads (These should be options that can be toggled on and off in an menu).

Overall- still quite useful if you work around the hiccups of the dictation not working 100%. It’s good for line practice but not good for using as a reader in replacement of a person got a self-tape audition (which would cause this app to be revolutionary if that was changed).

Developer Response ,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this review. As you mentioned, speech recognition isn't perfect, but it's getting better daily. Some words are just not recognized well. In this case, you can separate the line into two, or just delete the cue and use the next to the last word as your cue. Having this as an option (toggle) is a great suggestion and we will be adding it in our future updates. Scrolling while editing text of large lines should work. Please reach out directly at help@coldreadapp.com so we can troubleshoot this with our developers. Again, thank you so much.

Cuts off lines and sound when recording

When I self-taped with this and had a longer sentence of dialogue it would cut me off by coming in with the next line if I took even the slightest pause (it also cuts off your voice when the reader voice you recorded comes in, so you can’t then use that take unless you want to try some ADR).
So I separated my sentences into separate lines and tried again but then sometimes it wouldn’t recognise the pause and would wait for me to say another line before coming in with the next reader line. So I tried adding pauses to the script instead (you can choose the pause length) to allow room for me to say my line the speed I needed without being cut off.
But when I watched the tape back I realised that if you speak or have any noise during a pause (as well as a speaker line) the sound doesn’t get recorded so there were loads fo gaps in my dialogue.
I had to give up after take 15 and called a friend to help me tape over Zoom as it allowed no wiggle room and I was always stressed about when the app was going to cut me off during a minor pause and it affected my performance.
This app would be great if it could record the sound of your voice as well as putting in a pause or recorded line and if it recognised speech better so didn’t cut you off too early with the next line.
Gutted because I loved the concept and this would have been a game changer for self-tapes! Will look into purchasing again if tweaks are made.