Using SSML for Text-to-Speech

More examples like this in your documentation of supported tags would be really helpful.

From what I read on your pages I was not really able to tell which tags might be open tags and which might be closed. I was also not really aware, at first, that many tags needed attributes. And, to be clear, I am well verse in HTML, but didn't pick up on these things based on how little was provided. Going to Amazon's documentation helped with proper/complete tags, but then it's possible that the tags are not supported... all of this resulted in many error messages, because the tags were just not formed correctly, even though they were in the list.

And, since there was some messaging about not all tags being supported for all voices (standard vs neural, etc), it left me feeling a bit... underwhelmed, and dubious of the implementation, even though I was very much excited when I first saw that it was now available.

So, I am happy to see this example, and while this post probably seems negative, I really am just wanting to suggest that more examples get put into the documentation pages, so it's easier to try things out and get good results while playing with the various tags/attributes/options :)

Hello Matthew, 

Happy to help!

Some of the tags in your script can only be used with Neural voices such as the "<amazon:domain name="news"/>" newscaster tag. I also saw some tags in your script that weren't in the correct format. After removing the unsupported tags, and correcting the ones with incorrect format, I found that this version of your script will now work using standard voices:

 <speak>

Hello! <break time="500ms"/> This is an example of an SSML-enhanced text. <p>Paragraphs are separated by a natural pause in speech.</p> For phonetic pronunciation, use <phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="tɛkst">text</phoneme>. This sentence is followed by a natural pause in speech. This is an **important** point. <prosody volume="+3dB">Highlight this part.</prosody> This is the 1st <say-as interpret-as="ordinal">first</say-as> example of using say-as. The <sub alias="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</sub> is how you pronounce the abbreviation. <mark name="example_tag"/> <amazon:effect name="drc">This section has dynamic range compression for easier listening. </amazon:effect>This is a secret. <prosody volume="-5dB">Shh! It's a secret.</prosody>

</speak>

Note that the script above has the newscaster tag removed since it wasn't compatible when using standard voices.

You can check out this article for a full list of standard and neural voices, and here's a list of supported SSML tags as well as how to properly use them for your reference.

Hope this helps!

Hi. Completely agree that some more examples would be really useful. 
I'm struggling quite a bit. Not well-versed in html. 

I am trying to put together some basic literacy lessons and want letter sounds pronounced phonetically. I can't get the tag right. I tried copying the above example. Storyline accepts the markup, but just leaves silence where the ssss sound is supposed to be. Where have I gone wrong?
<phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="s">sss</phoneme>

Hi Steven 

Thanks for your reply and the example.

I opened the file to check where the tag was used, and voila, it was working. (murphy!) Perhaps I wasn't listening closely enough before. The 's' sound is there, though seems to follow directly from the word before. 

Could you advise how best to include a pause before the 's' sound and whether it is possible to lengthen the sound? So instead of a short s, a longer ssss sound (not separate s s s).

I've attached the file. It is a very rough draft of a literacy assessment concept. See slide 1.3.

Thanks!

Hello!
When I add SSML tags, they are read aloud by the narrator. I am using <speak> and </speak> before and after my text and the narrator says the word speak. What am I doing wrong?

Hi Jessica!

Thanks for reaching out. Could you please share your .story file with us in this thread or privately in a support case. It would be helpful to see your setup and suggest modifications to the SSML tags if needed!

Looking forward to hearing from you!