New Text to Speech Feature in Articulate Storyline 360
Nov 14, 2017
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Hi, everyone!
I have some great news to share. We just released another update for Storyline 360. In Update 83, we've included important fixes and new features!
One of the new features we've included:
- Unlock new possibilities for text-to-speech audio. Use speech synthesis markup language (SSML) to adjust the speaking rate, modify pronunciation, emphasize words, add pauses, and more.
Launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer to take advantage of this update, and click the Update button next to Storyline 360. You'll find our step-by-step instructions here.
Please let me know if you need additional help!
28 Replies
This is a great question Chris! I am not sure, but there doesn't seem to be at the moment.
It wouldn't surprise me if this was coming next though. When they released the CC features, the ability to import CC files was released first, and the CC editor came soon after.
You could also request a feature here: https://articulate.com/support/contact/feature-request
Thank you Veronica. I did submit a feature request. I will continue to use Polly until there is a way to change it or the speed of the speech doesn't detract from my courses.
I think I might have found a work around to get TTS captions and use my Polly audio files. Will post more later.
Sound good Chris, and would be super if you could update the thread, a lot of people will find this useful.
Do the Articulate 360 TTS engine support Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) to provide more user control like paragraph, breaks and audio pause etc to customize the audio creation.
Hello SibaPrasad! Check out this tutorial on using the text to speech feature. You can make changes to the text or to the voice, presently.
It sounds like it would be a popular feature to have more robust editing capabilities of the narration that's generated; let us know what works for you in a feature request!
+1 to adding the ability to use SSML tags.
Just to make sure I got everything right: there is no way to edit text-to-speech in order to insert pauses inside paragraphs or phrases, am I right?
I tried filling the text with dots or commas but nothing changes, and working with Silences is very time consuming, since there is no way to rapidly preview a slide during audio editing.
That's a pity: the tool could be useful but as it is, IMHO, it seems quite uncomplete and difficult to use properly.
Hi Nicola!
I typically recommend adding extra punctuation within the text, or manually adding silence to the narration in the Audio Editor. It sounds like you've already tried those options and you're looking for something more user-friendly. We're tracking these requests, and we'll definitely let you know if more editing tools are added to the text-to-speech feature in the future!
I vote for tags also. It seems reasonable that these could be added since the voices in 360 are from Amazon Polly, where you can control the speech.
Adding silence and manipulating the audio sounds more unnatural than using the built in SSML tags that work with Polly. Yes this may not sound as user friendly as some audio editor, but the tags are easy to use once you get hang of them and a system that allowed you to drop in specific tags would make manipulating the speech must quicker and give you a better control of how the speech sounds. This is similar to allowing users that can write JavaScript to use it and there should be a way to mark up the speech for those that can use tags.
Hi Alyssa,
and first of all thank you for your kind and quick reply. As you mentioned, I already tried adding extra punctuation but it just didn't work: even if I insert lots of dots or commas, pauses last the same. Should I use something else?
In ended I worked with silences in Audio editing and I managed to get the text how I wanted it, but it really takes a lot more time than working with tags or similar.
I hope you'll add a specific tool in the future since it doesn't seem that difficult to me!
Hi Nicola,
I'm glad you were able to add in the silences, and as Alyssa mentioned we're sharing all the experiences and feedback here with our team. We'll keep you posted on any new features for Text to speech!
Is there a way to slow down the speech speed? I am a new user here and I may be missing where that function may be located.
Hey Sam and welcome to E-Learning Heroes :)
That's been a common request and you're in the right place to get an update when we have one to share.
At this time, as you can see above, users are implementing silence within the audio to fill this need.
Hi all.
A little bit of 'Sherlock-Holming' brought me here since I was confident not to be the only one with this feature request.
So just for the record, my feature request has number: 01399278 [ref:_00D30Txo._500f31E32Nt:ref] from June, 7th.
I'd be pretty happy to hear from Articulate that things are proceeding in the direction of integrating similar features as in the above mentioned Amazon Polly.
Or at least the variation of talking speed which I think is the most needed one.
Hello - just registering my vote for greater text to speech features.
Just an FYI, there are new Neural Voices available for Amazon Polly. Read about it here. https://community.articulate.com/discussions/building-better-courses/new-neural-text-to-speech-voices-from-amazon-polly
Hi!
Is there a way to preview the TTS BEFORE inserting it into the slide? Currently I use a different TTS software package, so am able to preview it before saving it. This allows me to make changes, etc. Thanks!
I too am hopeful they add rate of speech controls and additional voice options, such as various accents.
I see lots of different requests going on here, but I might have a solution for you, but it requires going to the source that Storyline uses, Amazon Polly. To make things a bit simpler, I’ve created an application that addresses many of the things here:
Here’s what you do:
Can the SSML tags. features added to Storyline TTS engine, Currently this not much in use.
Hello, SibaPrasad!
It sounds like you'd like to use SSML in Storyline, is that right? If so, this functionality is part of our text-to-speech feature report.
I'll share your voice there and keep you posted on any changes!
Hi Katie,
What is the text-to-speech feature report? I have been curious for awhile if Storyline 360 will get SSML tags. If we write our text with proper tags then the speech can be parsed as we want it to sound versus the standard speech.
Hello Chris,
Thanks for reaching out, and good question!
This is an internal report, where we're tracking requests for more editing capabilities in text-to-speech. I'll surface your thoughts and let you know if this gets added to a future update!
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+1 to adding the ability to use SSML tags - please!