New in Storyline 360: Text to speech, object editing improvements, and more

Are there any plans to offer the Text to Speech in Storyline 3 or Presenter 13? That is the one thing lacking that makes me continue to use another software.

Hi June!

Text to Speech is exclusive to SL360. You can read here about how that will affect compatibility at this time if that would be helpful.

For those of us that cannot use 360 due to work restrictions, that is not good news at all. Little disappointing for me.

@leslie Just wanted to mention that I was able to finally download and install. Fantastic update!

Thanks Jason! I appreciate you popping back in with an update :)

I just finished a huge project where I had to generate text to speech in Captivate, export the audio file, import it to the appropriate Storyline slide, add cues to the timeline, copy and paste the script into triggers that synced with these cues, and play it back a couple of times to tweak.

Then I updated Storyline today and found this!

The new text to speech and revised closed captions are going to make projects like the one I just finished so much easier in the future. After seeing a demo of the new version of CC at the roadshow this summer, I'd say this update was about 90% of what I had hoped it would be. The selection of voices is great, and I cannot believe how freakin' easy it is to create closed captions right from TTS.

(What would bring my rating to 100%? The voices are very good, but I think the ones from NeoSpeech are a little better. Letting us add SSML tags would help a lot. And I'd love to see a little more control over the formatting, placement and appearance of CC in the slide. I appreciate that I can globally change the font size of all text elements in the player, including CC, but this makes some of the other player text elements look a little over-sized for the space.)

But even with these caveats, I'd like to applaud the team who made this possible. This is a great update.

Me too Virak - Another user issue is that I"m using it for highly technical systems and I need to be able to slow it down in sections.  I can add spaces (I think) but it's still too fast for the users to follow the guidance on the voice.

All great input, and keep it coming! Text to speech is a new feature for us, so we'll be curious to see how you're using it and what other ways it could improve. Feel free to share those here in ELH, or send to our product team right here. 😁 

I am loving the new additions to 360 and so do my clients.  However, they are asking questions that I'm not sure how to answer.  For example, if the course (including all text and narration) is in English, is it possible to add the closed captions in another language?

Also is it possible to add closed captions in another language to a video that is in English?

When I tested the text to speech and selected the language (say French) everything appeared in French, even the closed captions.

Am I being a little dense?  Thanks in advance for your reply.

Hi, loving this new function,  however, it doesn't seem to work on iPad? should it? or is this something that might happen at some point in the future?

 My instructors are really excited about the T2S feature. However, we've run into a snag. In a course for lab technicians, the word "bilirubin" is used. It's mispronounced by the T2S voice. Is there any way to correct pronunciation in the T2S feature?

It sometimes helps to spell it Phonetically 

billeerubin

That gave me this

@Phil Mayor: Thanks! That's a great suggestion. 

Thanks for sharing that tip, Phil!

And Gina, just wanted to note that Phonetic spelling is also helpful when writing scripts for human voice talent to record. 

Did the update to check out the text to speech voices, and a funny thing happened with the content library. When I go to insert an icon, it switches and only gives me the photo option.  When I select "icon" from the dropdown, it goes to photo. No matter how many times I try to select "icon," I cannot get the option.

Is this glitch related to the update?

Hi Linda!

We do have a similar issue reported that is happening after an image has been replaced. Does this sound like what may have happened to you as well?

Does exiting and restarting Storyline 360 then give you the options you are looking for in Content Library?

I'm loving the new text-to-speech feature! It's already saving me a lot of time, because I used to have to record scratch audio to demo early versions of modules for clients, but now I can just use this automatic feature. It's really the only thing I've ever missed when I switched from Captivate to Storyline, and now Storyline has it! Hooray!

Awesome, glad to hear that Tracy! 

Loving these enhancements! Thank you.

Do you know if the text rendering is available yet?

I'm hoping in the future there a lot more options on the text to speech. I agree with a lot of the comments. It's nice but not near the best in the industry. I'm using it for a basic run through be for I send my stuff to a live person. It would be great to be able to just use this.

LOVING the new text-to-speech options!

Question/request: Are there plans to add Chinese to the voice options?

Hi Jason. Glad to hear that you're loving the new text-to-speech options! We hope to add more languages and voices in the future as more high-quality voices become available. My advice is to stay tuned to E-Learning Heroes and bookmark our What's New page for all the latest product updates.