New Text to Speech Feature in Articulate Storyline 360

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:

• Adjust the overall speed of your files with one setting
• Adjust the overall pause duration for commas
• Add your own SSML to get more finer nuanced, naturally sounding results and as necessary, correct the pronunciation of words
• Neural voices
• Batch process your files 
• Preview a file before you batch process your files

Here’s what you do:

1. Get an Amazon Polly account (yes, there is some cost involved but doesn’t seem that prohibitive) (https://aws.amazon.com/polly/)
2. Save your scripts 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 files with HeroVoice TTS – apply a global setting for speed and even comma duration so your files are consistent.
5. Select the voice you want – these are the same as you’ll find in Storyline today including Neural voices (which aren’t currently available in Storyline)
6. Load each audio file into Storyline

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.