Forum Discussion
Text-to-Speech Issues & Sample Library Idea
Yesterday I was generating some text-to-speech in Storyline and the samples within SL were not playing for me. I would click the play button and it acted like they were playing but I could hear no sound. If I generated the speech from the text, then I could hear sound. Has anyone else experienced this issue before and if so, was it resolved for you?
Because of this issue, I had an idea of a repository hosted by Articulate where all of the voice samples would be housed. It would be nice to send a client to this spot to review and select which voice they would like to use. We could always make our own, but it would be nice if Articulate hosted and updated their own for us. Thanks!
9 Replies
Hi LeeMillardButlr,
Happy to help!
Would you mind sharing the steps you took to test the audio files that weren't paying properly in Storyline 360? I'd like to see if I can replicate the behavior to understand what's happening.
You also don't need a repository to share voice samples with your client. You just need to add all the voice samples to a single Storyline 360 course, publish the course to Review 360 and share the link with your client so they can listen to each voice sample in the course.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Hello Jose,
The problem is clearly on my side, because no one else is reporting it and I am taking the same steps to do it as others have. I simply go into the text-to-speech area and next to each voice is a play button icon. After clicking this play button, nothing happens. But what should happen, is I should hear a sample of the voice. Even after generating the voice over, I need to exit out of that window to go back to my timeline and then preview it. Do I need to reinstall SL or is there a repair feature?
Also, just adding the voices to a SL course is fine, but having a filterable repository would still be a better solution. This way you can filter to the style, gender, and language you want.
Thanks for your help!
Hi LeeMillardButlr are you still experiencing the same issue? I too am having the same problem. I have just recently updated to windows 11 and since then I can't listen to my text-to-speech generations unless I insert and then do a slide preview - this is problematic if you are wanting to quickly determine if the voice sample sounds as intended.
Hi! I am no longer experiencing this, as it took a long time troubleshooting with Articulate Support and our IT department. Turns out, Windows Media Player (Legacy version) was not installed. Try checking and installing that to see if that fixes the issue. That did it for me!
As a follow-up, Articulate are investigating how they can disassociate this technology from relying on WMP. I don't have any further knowledge of that, but thought I'd drop that note.
Hello BenClatworthy-3,
I understand you're having difficulty playing the text-to-speech audio after generating. I wasn't able to experience this on my end. I see that Lee has jumped in to share what worked well for them after troubleshooting with our team. Thanks so much, LeeMillardButlr!
If the Legacy Windows Media Player is installed but you still cannot hear the generated audio, let's take a closer look at your setup:
- Is this happening with other project files or just this one?
- What voice are you using? Does this happen if you try using a different voice?
- If you import your slides into a new .story file and generate, does this still happen?
If you are running the latest version of Storyline (Update 100) and experiencing this across multiple .story files, I recommend a repair of Storyline 360. Sometimes, a repair can fix some erratic behavior across project files.
If you can't hear the generated audio after the repair, please share your .story file and a screen recording of this behavior in this thread or privately in a support case so we can investigate further.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Love the idea of a voice repository! We are trying to convince our leadership team to invest in the AI option, and it would be a much easier sell if we could access samples of all the available voices.
Hi TheresaHobbs-41,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us!
I understand that many users advocate for new tools and products to their leadership team. We do offer a trial to test out features. Do you mean having access to all voices outside of a trial?
Hi KellyAuner,
I mean access to samples of all available AI voices outside of a trial — a repository of audio files of each voice saying the same sentence(s). This would allow Articulate users (and those in charge of procurement budgets) to simply go to a site and sample any of the voices and languages available with the AI add-on. It would be much easier to justify the added cost if we could quickly take budget managers to the site and let them listen for themselves!
