Forum Discussion
New Neural Text to Speech Voices from Amazon Polly
Storyline 360 uses standard voices from Amazon Polly for it's text to speech functionality. I imagine they use their API for this. This has been great for prototyping sides and getting the timing right. Occasionally it can be good for scenarios if you can't afford to hire other voices. Recently, Amazon has developed a new version of their voices called Neural Voices that use better algorithms for synthesizing voices. I would love to see Articulate let us access these new voices directly from Storyline. You can use them by accessing Amazon Polly if you have an Amazon account and downloading the audio and importing it manually into your timeline. I have created a quick demo to let you hear the difference.
https://360.articulate.com/review/content/a6e4ce5a-f982-42aa-8cd1-76e32b2204cd/review
You can read more about it here: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-polly-introduces-neural-text-to-speech-and-newscaster-style/
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 enhanced feature 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.
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!
This is great Rick - add this as a feature request to Articulate and I've just done submitted mine.
Thanks for sharing.
I am currently using the Google Wavenet voices as they are far superior to the Amazon Polly voices. They sound more natural. I use a Google Chrome add-in to play the speech of the text on the screen and record the audio to use inside Storyline. It is definitely more work than the built-in text to speech, but the voices are far superior.
Hi Anthony. Cool. I have not used that. I will have to check that out. The extra work might be worth it.
Thanks!
Rick
Hey Anthony, what add in do you use?
I use Wellsaid Labs. It is the best I have ever heard as far as computer-generated voices.
We spends thousands of dollars each year on professional narrators for our major elearning projects. Our clients like the results so using professionals is well worth our investment. However, for smaller learning activities, using professional narrators is not practical nor cost-effective.
So I was excited to discover neural voices. Although still not perfect, these voices are now good enough for use in some projects. One of our current projects is targeted at learners for whom English is not their first language. Research we did indicates that these learners prefer to learn by "listening" rather than by "reading. So as a result, I am using neural voices to narrate some of the lessons.
Here is a sample micro-learning lesson that we built using SL3 and neural voices.
Since I use StoryLine 3 (and not 360), the text-to-speech feature is not currently available to us. Fortunately, I was able to find a very affordable cloud-based service that allows me to easily create narration using a variety of neural and other voices. Once the conversion is done, I simply download them for insertion into StoryLine and other programs.
For other StoryLine 3 users who may be interested in trying out this service, you can find out more information here. (I am not a big fan of all of the hype and sales approach at this website / vendor. However, I have subscribed to the service and the bottom line is that is works!)
I hope that this information may be useful with your elearning projects. Thanks.
Russ
UPDATE: I just discovered that I can further improve the quality of the neural voice output by running the audio file through a program called Auphonic Leveler. I have used this software for years with my narrations. It does a great job in "leveling" the audio volume and cleaning up the noise. It does involve an extra step, but I believe it is well worth the effort.
Hello, Everyone!
I'm happy to share that we have released a new update for Storyline 360 (v3.80.30988.0.).
In this update, we included an enhancement for:
- Support for NTTS or Neural Voices
Please update to the latest version of Storyline 360 to see this improvement. Here's how:
If you have any questions, please let us know in this thread or privately in a support case.
Have a great day!
Yup. No problem. Done.
(BTW, Love the new changes to triggers and actions workflow).
Hi Rick. This is very cool! Thanks for sharing!
I concur with Wendy: it would be awesome of you to share this with a feature request if you haven't done so already. It just helps our team prioritize features, etc.+1.
Thanks for sharing Russ. Really great. You can also register with your Amazon account for Amazon Polly and they have a page where you can enter in text and download clips the same way for free as well.
Although Neural voices are not supported inside of Storyline yet, I have created an application that can help streamline the process if you use Amazon Polly directly like Rick talks about in his post here.
1. You’ll need an Amazon Polly account (https://aws.amazon.com/polly/)
2. Save your scripts to be encoded as separate files (MS Word or Text)
3. Download HeroVoice TTS from the Microsoft Windows Store
(fully functioning 15-day free trial)
4. Encode your script files using HeroVoice TTS
5. Load each audio file into StorylineHeroVoice TTS supports many of the requests that I’ve seen on the Storyline forums including:
· Adjusting the overall speed of your files with one setting
· Adjusting the overall pause duration for commas
· Adding your own SSML tags to get more finer nuanced, naturally sounding results
· Neural voices
· Batch processing your script filesHi Thor. How much extra time does it take you to do this do you think rather than using the built in TTS?
Hi Ginger -
My workflow is a bit different now since I last posted in this thread because I created another HERO app to streamline the process even more. This workflow is based on having scripts in the Notes section of a Storyline course and I can say confidently not only is it faster than Storyline's built in TTS but gets better results:
1) First, I use HEROPREVAIL to extract the scripts into one folder. Each script is automatically labeled with the slide number and title of the slide. I don't have to go slide-by-slide to extract the scripts as it's done automatically. A significant timesaver and stress reducer, too!
2) Next, I use HEROVOICE TTS. I select the provider I want to use (Amazon, Google, or Microsoft - you do have to set up accounts with the providers you want to use), I then select the quality of voice (Neural is the best and not currently offered by Storyline), the language, and then the voice.
3) I select the files I want to encode and let HEROVOICE TTS work in the background. It's very fast as it processes through the list without any intervention on my part.
4) I then manually insert the files back into Storyline. Easy to do since they're all labeled but probably the slowest step in the entire process. No surprise there since the file has to be imported and placed on the timeline. It's about the same time it takes for Storyline to add the Text to Speech file it gets back from Amazon.
Step 3 in this workflow offers flexibility, as you don't have to batch encode. You could do it one file at a time so you could listen and then make adjustments. HEROVOICE TTS supports SSML (Synthesized Speech Markup Language) and provides tag support to make it faster - you don't have to learn another programming language per se as it helps form the tags correctly for you. Very helpful for pauses, slowing down the speed, and correcting those pronunciation problems you've encountered or read about here in the Storyline forums.
FYI - I typically like to batch encode because most of the time it's good enough. If I find a mistake, no worries, it's easy to correct.
I hope this helps and if you have more questions, please feel free to send me a private message or reach out to me on LinkedIn. There are more HERO apps and I'm working on a new one that's going to need testers to make sure it's as good as the ones mentioned here. 🙂
