Forum Discussion
Text to speech - How to fix the first word being cut off
I've been using Articulate 360's voice to speech feature in software simulations, instead of the text bubbles. I've noticed that frequently the first word or syllable gets cut off. For example If a sentence starts with "To edit a document..." The "To" gets cut off. I tried inserting some spaces with the keyboard space bar or dots to no avail.
Any tricks to fix this?
Also, are there tricks to improve the intonation? I've noticed that adding commas between words can make a difference sometimes.
- Jürgen_Schoene_Community Member
wireless headphones?
- Jürgen_Schoene_Community Member
is this cut off audio the first audio in the slide?
- ThereseMicha925Community Member
Thank you Jurgen. Here are my answers: Sorry, it is the first "word" not sentence. It is cut off after I publish it. It runs well on the Preview this Slide. I publish the course to Review 360. I use Articulate built-in voices in TTS.
- MargaretLang832Community Member
I had this same issue a few years ago, that's why I'm on this feed, and the only solution I found was to edit the beginning of the first audio recording and add 4 seconds of silence. It helps if you know this in advance. Hope this helps.
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- Jürgen_Schoene_Community Member
The first sentence is cut off
sentence or word ?
is the audio cut off when
- you play it directly in storyline after creating ?
- test the slide with "Preview this slide" ?
- published to course with "publish to web" ?
do you use SSML for text-to-speech ?
- ThereseMicha925Community Member
I'm having the same issue of Amos even after few years of his posting. The first sentence is cut off. I thought to use the commas before the sentence starts, but they appear in the Closed Captioning.
- RobertWoods-110Community Member
This fixed it for me...
Right click on the sound icon and go to 'Sound'
Go to the playback tab.
Choose the speakers that you are using and choose properties.
Click Advanced and UNCHECK 'Enable audio enhancements'Hi Robert!
Thanks for sharing your workaround! I'm sure other members of the community will find the steps very helpful!
Have a great rest of your week!
- JoshNellist-71bCommunity Member
This is a pretty old thread now, but I'm experiencing it in fall 2023. I believe the issue to be this:
Many bluetooth headsets/speakers will go into a type of power saving mode when there is no sound being transmitted, such as when a Storyline slide ends. Sometimes this happens as quickly as 1/2 a second of silence, depending on the device.
When the next slide begins, the headset won't be triggered to "on" until it senses sound. With a human narrated audio file there is likely to be a tiny bit of "room tone" or other sound that will precede the voice kicking in, even by a fraction of a second. Most editors will always have a slight bit of dead air at the start of a narration file. This will trigger the headset to turn on and by the time the voice starts the first word, we'll hear it. But, with a generated voice the audio is perfectly clean, and thus the voice is the first sound the headset picks up. This leads to the first word being frequently clipped.
I'm testing this out at my company now. Most users are listening to e-trainings on Poly headsets and this problem is happening a lot. I'm experimenting with background sounds, like music, to keep the headset on. I don't really want music playing on everything so the next step is to experiment with some kind of sound that will trigger the headset but humans won't actually hear. Maybe that tone that only teenagers can hear or something?- Jürgen_Schoene_Community Member
How about a very quiet background noise - I've already done that successfully
you could start all slides with 1 sec of such (almost inaudible) audiofile
- StacyMadsenCommunity Member
You can also add a fraction of a second space at the beginning in the audio edit screen.
- RockyPatCommunity Member
This started 5 years ago and im using this service and it is still having the same issues, this is highly unacceptable, how can a company not fix something like this in 5 WHOLE YEARS
Hi Jatinder,
Thanks for reaching out and I'm sorry to hear that you're experiencing this issue! I'm happy to help troubleshoot and I'd like to start with a few clarifying questions.
- Are you using the latest update of Storyline 360? We are now on Storyline 360 (Build 3.75.30269.0)
- Have you tried using punctuation, such as commas and semicolons, when you want to insert brief pauses between words?
- If you need a pause before the first word, you can convert your text to speech, then open the clip in the built-in audio editor and insert silence where it's needed.
If the issue persists, I'd like to take a look at your file. You can upload it here or share it privately in a support case. We'll delete it from our systems once troubleshooting is complete.
- MargaretLang832Community Member
The fix for me was to add a half second of silence to audio after it's recorded and adjust the closed captioning. I have the latest version.