Realtime Speed and Production
Speed in the right units
Machines are rated in strokes per minute; assignments are described in words per minute. On average, one English word requires roughly 1.4 strokes, so about 200 words per minute translates to something near 280 strokes per minute. Expect questions that try to make strokes and words interchangeable. They are not, and your practical ceiling is set by accuracy under load, not by how fast the keys move.
Building production reliability
Realtime production is a checklist discipline. Before the record begins: confirm the software is in realtime output mode, verify the connection (cabled connections are generally more stable than wireless, and a serial-to-USB adapter can fail silently), confirm the correct output port and baud rate, open a viewer or send a test feed, and type a test sentence containing a number, a date, and a proper name. Numbers and names are where feeds break first. Keep battery or backup power available and save the file early and often.
Latency, cleaning, and delivery
Realtime text appears with a small processing delay; viewers see a lag that grows if you backlog. Decide in advance whether the client receives uncleaned realtime or a cleaned file, and know your software's options for timestamps, indexing, and export formats. Confidentiality matters: a wireless or remote feed is still a distribution of the record.
Rule of thumb: if a viewer could not read a sentence within a few seconds of it being spoken, stop and diagnose before the next exhibit is marked.
Traps to watch: treating baud rate as a speed rating for the reporter, assuming a wireless hookup is automatically secure, and skipping the test sentence because the connection "looked fine."