You can convert text to speech right in Storyline 360, and choose the voice and language to make sure every word sounds perfect. Hear several of the available voices in this module.
Is there a way to change the voice globally? I created an eLearning and have copied it for a slightly different audience and I want to use a different character and voice in the new eLearning. Do I have to change the voice on every slide with audio, or is there a way to change them all at once?
I love this. I just have one question: I have an acronym that is said as a word instead of an acronym {AUA}. How can I get it to say the acronym?
Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Kimberly
Hi Kimberly I've had this issue as well and found you can put a dash between each of the letters to pronounce each of them quickly or a comma between each will pronounce them slowly.
Thank you so much Stephanie. I did not think about dashes. I just did it phonically and that worked better but I like the dashes. It sounds so much better. I am very thankful for your assistance!
Kimberly
Text-to-speech has certainly come along way in the past several years. It's great to have access to different accents. However, I wonder if our brains receive synthetic voices differently than real human ones. Maybe it's just me, but I find artificial voices easier to tune out.
@Victoria: I agree. They're much better than a few years ago (and getting better), but I don't like listening to them for an extended period.
Most people I know, use them for placeholder narration while building courses. Some use them for courses that are updated frequently where they don't have resources to always record.
Unfortunately, I think some use them as an inexpensive way to get narration. Personally, for those courses, I think it's probably best to just not offer narration.
I'm conflicted. When it comes to drafts for scripts and VO, it's definitely worthwhile to utilize a TTS. However, the end result should always be about the learner and done by a human.
Retention comes from many aspects, but right now, a good amount of the learning that instructional designers are developing are 2D and fall into the the cognitive
theory of multimedia learning (CTML) http://etec.ctlt.ubc.ca/510wiki/Cognitive_Theory_of_Multimedia_Learning
When you take away the human inflection, which can communicate just as much as the verbiage, it takes away from the learners verbal model, which can cause the learner to get confused.
Instead you have learners who are focusing more on "Why this sounds wrong," which I'm pretty certain isn't a learning objective (:P)
TTS has com... Expand
I'm conflicted. When it comes to drafts for scripts and VO, it's definitely worthwhile to utilize a TTS. However, the end result should always be about the learner and done by a human.
Retention comes from many aspects, but right now, a good amount of the learning that instructional designers are developing are 2D and fall into the the cognitive
theory of multimedia learning (CTML) http://etec.ctlt.ubc.ca/510wiki/Cognitive_Theory_of_Multimedia_Learning
When you take away the human inflection, which can communicate just as much as the verbiage, it takes away from the learners verbal model, which can cause the learner to get confused.
Instead you have learners who are focusing more on "Why this sounds wrong," which I'm pretty certain isn't a learning objective (:P)
TTS has come a long way, but it's not there yet.
You're right that the tool would definitely be useful for drafts. Thanks for providing the link about CTML. I hadn't heard of the theory and it has many interesting things to consider.
Articulate appears to be using Amazon Polly for their voice-to-text engine. My experience is that it better to sign up for Amazon Polly directly, as you get 1 million characters per month free.
Why use Polly directly, and not through Articulate?
It is simply because Polly supports SSM,L whereas Articulate only offers Plain Text. With SSML, you can control you punctuations and pauses directly in the text. With Articulate's plain text support, you have to edit the audio afterwards to insert the breaks. The problem is, if you make any changes to the dialogue, you lose all your changes and have to redo the editing.
Here is an example from AWS Polly site:
He was caught up in the game. In the middle of the 10/3/2014
W3C meeting, he shouted, "Score!"
quite... Expand
Articulate appears to be using Amazon Polly for their voice-to-text engine. My experience is that it better to sign up for Amazon Polly directly, as you get 1 million characters per month free.
Why use Polly directly, and not through Articulate?
It is simply because Polly supports SSM,L whereas Articulate only offers Plain Text. With SSML, you can control you punctuations and pauses directly in the text. With Articulate's plain text support, you have to edit the audio afterwards to insert the breaks. The problem is, if you make any changes to the dialogue, you lose all your changes and have to redo the editing.
Here is an example from AWS Polly site:
He was caught up in the game. In the middle of the 10/3/2014
W3C meeting, he shouted, "Score!"
quite loudly. When his boss stared at him, he repeated "Score" in a whisper.
I suggest you still keep a copy of your dialogue in the slide notes in case you need to make any changes.
I use these voices all the time as placeholders as well as for reading my e-books (cheaper than audiobooks - my mum had a mechanical voice so this is a no brainer for me). The one thing that users need to keep in mind is that you have to change words that are spelled the same but sound different to their phonetic spelling, i.e., "I read (RED) the book." "Please read (REED) the book." Not changing it often results in some funny dialogue.
19 Comments
I'm conflicted. When it comes to drafts for scripts and VO, it's definitely worthwhile to utilize a TTS. However, the end result should always be about the learner and done by a human. Retention comes from many aspects, but right now, a good amount of the learning that instructional designers are developing are 2D and fall into the the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML) http://etec.ctlt.ubc.ca/510wiki/Cognitive_Theory_of_Multimedia_Learning When you take away the human inflection, which can communicate just as much as the verbiage, it takes away from the learners verbal model, which can cause the learner to get confused. Instead you have learners who are focusing more on "Why this sounds wrong," which I'm pretty certain isn't a learning objective (:P) TTS has com... Expand
Articulate appears to be using Amazon Polly for their voice-to-text engine. My experience is that it better to sign up for Amazon Polly directly, as you get 1 million characters per month free. Why use Polly directly, and not through Articulate? It is simply because Polly supports SSM,L whereas Articulate only offers Plain Text. With SSML, you can control you punctuations and pauses directly in the text. With Articulate's plain text support, you have to edit the audio afterwards to insert the breaks. The problem is, if you make any changes to the dialogue, you lose all your changes and have to redo the editing. Here is an example from AWS Polly site: He was caught up in the game. In the middle of the 10/3/2014 W3C meeting, he shouted, "Score!" quite... Expand