I pasted in a block of text and ran the text to speech option. It works well until the last sentence where it adds the word "Dot" to the audio clip. If I take the last period out, it still adds "Dot". If I delete a couple of sentences back, the word "Dot" disappears.
My guess is there was a hiccup in the text or the program. I just went back and cleared all the text out, dropped it into notepad and then hand typed the text. Also made a new story with the old text. Maybe it has something to do with the amount. I have no clue at this point.
Sometimes Articulate can get buggy. I remember on one learning I was working on, I had text animating in by paragraph, and for some reason when a new paragraph came in, the last line of the previous paragraph would ALSO animate in again, and appear thicker. Had to delete and redo the text box.
I had the same experience with a particularly long block of text -- I could get the behavior to stop if I took away enough of the text, but removing any of the content permanently wasn't really an option. So, my guess is that it has something to do with length of text.
But, you can use the audio editor (click the speaker icon on your slide, go to Audio Tools on the top-bar when it appears) and manually edit out the last couple of seconds where the "dot" appears.
Pasting into Notepad is a good recommendation to strip out any unnecessary and invisible formatting, which could be contributing to what you're hearing with the text to speech. It's not something I've heard of other folks running into yet, have you seen this on a lot of files, or this is the first time?
I always copy and paste from Notepad. Learned that lesson years ago. It may have something to do with the length of the text. If you trim out a few sentences, the "Dot" goes away.
I posted my story file a couple of replies up Ashley... feel free to play with it. I think its a small glitch in the program. I've cut and pasted from Notepad, typed directly in the text to speech window, etc. It still exports with the word "Dot".
Hi there Dane! This has been a tough one for us to nail down, since we haven't had any luck recreating it in a new file. Do you have a sample file that shows the issue? If so, we'd love to take a look at it!
I had the same problem today. So I created a cue point right before the 'dot' in the audio. Then I created a trigger to pause the timeline at the cue point.
Thanks, Janet for sharing that idea. Another workaround our team spotted is to add a carriage return to longer strings of text. We're continuing to investigate this, so we'll keep you posted.
I had a coworker run into this problem yesterday. His workaround was to break up the paragraph (e.g., put half of it on a new line in the text entry or to paragraph break each sentence onto a new line) and text-to-speech will no longer say "dot." While not an ideal solution, it works for now. It seems like it's being caused by an odd paragraph character limit.
I've attached a file where I tested the paragraph character limit with lorem ipsum filler text.
Hi Alyssa. I just submitted a support ticket and enclosed my SL file with the "DOT" narration. It happens to me quite a bit. The "DOT" is not only at the end of the file, it can be anywhere in the paragraph. I also receive the "Something went wrong" message when working with TTS. Hope they can fix this! It is slowing me down!
In case this helps, the best way currently to get around the text-to-speech adding the word "dot" is to break up the text into paragraphs when generating the text-to-speech.
I found the character limit for a paragraph to be ~952 (no spaces)/1,115 (with spaces). By 978 (no spaces)/1,144 (with spaces), the spoken word "dot" appears.
Can you please fix the software bug so there isn't a character limit. I am also having the same problem with the word dot at the end of the long paragraph. This shouldn't be the case. If I have a really long paragraph I shouldn't be limited to a specific number of characters.
Thanks for checking in. I'm sorry that you ran into the issue where you hear the word "dot" at the end of your paragraph.
It is currently in the early stages of review based on our How We Tackle Bugs article. To help you plan, it's unlikely to be fixed in the next couple of updates.
For now, have you tried the workaround Ashley mentioned above about adding a carriage return to see if that helps the issue? We'll pop back in here when there's any progress to share.
I had this happen in my last project and I figured out what the issue was. There was a blank line after the last sentence that had bullet list format applied I couldn’t see the bullet point since there was no text on that line, but the text to speech read it out as dot.
The "dot" sound can appear any where in the sentence and at the end of the text to speech. Had it removed and it kept appearing itself. How can I get rid of the "dot" permanently?
We narrowed the cause down to the character length. If the text exceeds 1000 characters, then the word "dot" is read. We'll update you as soon as we know more!
For now, one way to prevent "dot" from being read is to include a carriage return in strings of text that exceed a character count of 1000.
If that doesn't help, we'd love to troubleshoot the affected file. Simply use this link to open a case, and we'll take it from there!
I had the same problem. Using the sound editing tool is a finicky, and fine art, but it worked. Thanks for the advice. I used word.docx to edit, copy and paste the text to AS 360. I'll check the outline view for any hidden code, but this is a good solution until the bug is addressed. Thank you
I have some great news to share. We just released another update for Storyline 360. In Update 74, we’ve included important fixes and new features.
One of the bugs that was fixed was an issue where "the Text-to-Speech feature was adding audible 'dot' to generated audio if single line of text exceeds 1000ish characters".
23 Replies
Bob
I've never seen this happen, but I haven't used text to speech in a month or so. Let me play around and see if it happens to me.
My guess is there was a hiccup in the text or the program. I just went back and cleared all the text out, dropped it into notepad and then hand typed the text. Also made a new story with the old text. Maybe it has something to do with the amount. I have no clue at this point.
Sometimes Articulate can get buggy. I remember on one learning I was working on, I had text animating in by paragraph, and for some reason when a new paragraph came in, the last line of the previous paragraph would ALSO animate in again, and appear thicker. Had to delete and redo the text box.
Hi Bob,
I had the same experience with a particularly long block of text -- I could get the behavior to stop if I took away enough of the text, but removing any of the content permanently wasn't really an option. So, my guess is that it has something to do with length of text.
But, you can use the audio editor (click the speaker icon on your slide, go to Audio Tools on the top-bar when it appears) and manually edit out the last couple of seconds where the "dot" appears.
Yes... already been there. Thanks. Its just annoying.
Hi Bob,
Pasting into Notepad is a good recommendation to strip out any unnecessary and invisible formatting, which could be contributing to what you're hearing with the text to speech. It's not something I've heard of other folks running into yet, have you seen this on a lot of files, or this is the first time?
I always copy and paste from Notepad. Learned that lesson years ago. It may have something to do with the length of the text. If you trim out a few sentences, the "Dot" goes away.
I posted my story file a couple of replies up Ashley... feel free to play with it. I think its a small glitch in the program. I've cut and pasted from Notepad, typed directly in the text to speech window, etc. It still exports with the word "Dot".
Bob
I have had the same issue a few times in 360
Hi there Dane! This has been a tough one for us to nail down, since we haven't had any luck recreating it in a new file. Do you have a sample file that shows the issue? If so, we'd love to take a look at it!
You can share that file with us right here.
I had the same problem today. So I created a cue point right before the 'dot' in the audio. Then I created a trigger to pause the timeline at the cue point.
Thanks, Janet for sharing that idea. Another workaround our team spotted is to add a carriage return to longer strings of text. We're continuing to investigate this, so we'll keep you posted.
I had a coworker run into this problem yesterday. His workaround was to break up the paragraph (e.g., put half of it on a new line in the text entry or to paragraph break each sentence onto a new line) and text-to-speech will no longer say "dot." While not an ideal solution, it works for now. It seems like it's being caused by an odd paragraph character limit.
I've attached a file where I tested the paragraph character limit with lorem ipsum filler text.
Hi Alyssa. I just submitted a support ticket and enclosed my SL file with the "DOT" narration. It happens to me quite a bit. The "DOT" is not only at the end of the file, it can be anywhere in the paragraph. I also receive the "Something went wrong" message when working with TTS. Hope they can fix this! It is slowing me down!
Hi Jill,
In case this helps, the best way currently to get around the text-to-speech adding the word "dot" is to break up the text into paragraphs when generating the text-to-speech.
I found the character limit for a paragraph to be ~952 (no spaces)/1,115 (with spaces). By 978 (no spaces)/1,144 (with spaces), the spoken word "dot" appears.
Hi Jill! I see that Vevette is working through these issues with you. Thanks for submitting your files!
Can you please fix the software bug so there isn't a character limit. I am also having the same problem with the word dot at the end of the long paragraph. This shouldn't be the case. If I have a really long paragraph I shouldn't be limited to a specific number of characters.
Hi Heinee,
I had this happen in my last project and I figured out what the issue was. There was a blank line after the last sentence that had bullet list format applied I couldn’t see the bullet point since there was no text on that line, but the text to speech read it out as dot.
The "dot" sound can appear any where in the sentence and at the end of the text to speech. Had it removed and it kept appearing itself. How can I get rid of the "dot" permanently?
Good morning, Susan!
I'm sorry you're affected by this bug.
We narrowed the cause down to the character length. If the text exceeds 1000 characters, then the word "dot" is read. We'll update you as soon as we know more!
For now, one way to prevent "dot" from being read is to include a carriage return in strings of text that exceed a character count of 1000.
If that doesn't help, we'd love to troubleshoot the affected file. Simply use this link to open a case, and we'll take it from there!
I had the same problem
I had the same problem. Using the sound editing tool is a finicky, and fine art, but it worked. Thanks for the advice. I used word.docx to edit, copy and paste the text to AS 360. I'll check the outline view for any hidden code, but this is a good solution until the bug is addressed. Thank you
Hello Everyone!
I have some great news to share. We just released another update for Storyline 360. In Update 74, we’ve included important fixes and new features.
One of the bugs that was fixed was an issue where "the Text-to-Speech feature was adding audible 'dot' to generated audio if single line of text exceeds 1000ish characters".
To take advantage of this update, launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer 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!