Text to Speech Empowers Users

Today’s text to speech (TTS) computer voices are empowering users to add professional narration in presentations easily.

Advances in text to speech technology have replaced the old robotic computer voices with new, amazingly realistic ones.

Synthesized from real voices, these remarkable text to speech voices can read books aloud beautifully without a mistake, guided only by grammar, sentence structure and punctuation. People use them to learn and review while driving.

The exciting news is that these articulate text to speech voices have now been harnessed by Tuval Software Industries’ Speech-Over to empower users to add professional narration in presentations easily.

Speech-Over accepts user narration text and launches text to speech voices from within PowerPoint to record professional narrations from the text alone.

Change the narration text as often as you need and these tireless voices record new versions quickly and faithfully without complaint.

Availability of Text-to-Speech Voices

TTS voices are separate computer applications which, once installed, are recognized by Speech-Over. They are available in male and female gender, in all major languages, and in various regional dialects.

Basic quality Microsoft voices are included free. For much better results, premium TTS voices are available from voice vendors such as AT&T and NeoSpeech. Low cost licenses are available for personal use. When voice recordings are distributed, an audio distribution license is generally required. Speech-Over uses SAPI 5 standard TTS voices. 

What is Text-to-Speech?

Text to speech is the automated synthesis of speech from text. The heart of the system is the text to speech  engine – a sophisticated piece of software that:

· parses the text input,

· analyzes its grammar, sentence structure, punctuation and capitalization, and

· activates voice simulations to produce a vocal rendering of the text.

The data for individual voices, including regional accents, are provided in separate files called "voices". The text to speech  engine can work with any of the voices interchangeably.

The text to speech  system is illustrated in the following diagram:

Improved Text To Speech Technology

Today’s text to speech technology is much improved over that of even a few years ago. The older systems -- which produced the robotic-like sounds that people tend to associate with computer voices -- used the parametric or formant synthesis method to simulate the acoustic properties of speech.

Uses Real Voices

Recently, voices that use the concatenation method have become commercially available: the voice of a real human speaker is divided into phonemes, which are stored in the voice file. In a particular application, the text to speech engine assembles the phonemes according to the input text to reconstruct the original human voice to speak the text. Because a real human voice is used, it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between it and the real thing.

Text To Speech Applications

Text to speech technology can help businesses save time and money, especially when compared to the alternative of using pre-recorded speech files. The cost per minute of audio track of the text to speech system is less than half the cost of studio-based recording and synchronization. The savings are especially significant in the following cases:

· Where the text can change – with text to speech, changes are made by simple text editing as opposed to expensive studio re-recording

· Multi-lingual applications – with text to speech, you simply switch voices to the language desired

· When you need to make deadlines – the text to speech system is available any time, any place

Knowledge Transfer Applications

Presentations whose purpose is to transfer knowledge are well-suited to text to speech technology. This type of presentation is usually given to people who have a need to receive and understand the information being presented, for example training presentations or corporate communications where text to speech voices are quite acceptable.

Speech-Over Studio TTS Platform

Tuval Software Industries’ Speech-Over™ is an efficient platform for integrating the text to speech system with PowerPoint.

Among the features and benefits offered by Speech-Over:

· Embedded text-to-speech engine

· Speech editing for quick and easy entry and editing of speech text, including SAPI voice modulation tags, and association of speech with screen shape. Text can be typed in or dictated.

· Integration of multiple voices in a presentation to make it more interesting and varied

· Alternative narrations of a presentation for different audiences, including in different languages.