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!
Hi, Shawn!
Thanks for confirming that. If you try Michael's suggestion of making a change to the text, and the voices don't seem to be updated, please let us know! You can reach out here or privately in a support case.
I am disappointed with the new voices in the version update. Why were the new options not simply added instead of apparently replacing the old voices? Our team is in the middle of a project and the new voices are too different from the old ones so we will have to stick with an older version of Storyline to keep consistency.
If there is another solution or something that I am missing please let me know. Currently we can't afford to go to new sounding voices (with same names) during the middle of production of training lessons. The new voices have noticeable changes in speed and tone vs. their old counterparts.
Tim, I share similar sentiments, but instead regarding the same characters since the update. We've experienced many instances recently of the Amazon Polly API changing the overall tone and speed of the same character, and I cannot seem to find a supported change log.
Of course, we all expect these voices to get better over time, but because this is used in an authoring tool, it would be very much appreciated to know if or when voices may significantly change and force rework.
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!
