Learn Dolphin Publisher: Using the TTS encoder

Dolphin Publisher is computer software which enables you to create human narrated DAISY talking books for people with visual impairments and learning disabilities. This video shows you how to add audio to Dolphin Publisher projects using the TTS encoder.

Transcript

Using the TTS encoder. 

In this next example I will show you how to add audio to your project using Dolphin Publishers text to speech (TTS) encoder. This is the easiest way to create fully synchronised text and audio content. 

In this example I will TTS encode the first chapter of the project that I created in the previous demonstration. 

To TTS encode this chapter go to the tools menu at the top of the screen and select 'TTS encode' and then select 'current heading' from the sub menu. This will first launch the TTS settings window. 

The next step in using the TTS encoder is to choose the synthetic voices to use. Here all of the available voices on the PC system will be listed. It is possible to choose one voice for the announcement of headings and another for the reading of the body text. In this example I will choose the voice 'Mary' for both the headings and the body text. Pressing the 'play' button allows you to preview the voice. In the lower half of the screen there are additional settings that allow the play back speed of the voices to be adjusted, the volume and also the sample rate. In this instance I am happy with the settings so I will click on 'Okay'.

Next Dolphin Publisher will begin the TTS encoding process. The time it takes varies depending on the PC processor speeds and the voice that has been selected. As you can see in this example this particular synthetic voice is generating very quickly.

The dialogue on screen gives a status in terms of percentage completed.

100% and we are done, it has taken less than a minute to generate over 16 minutes of synthetic speech. If we now hit play we can see that the audio has been perfectly synchronised with the on screen text, and the project is now ready for output for delivery.
(book audio)

In the next example I will show you how to import existing audio files into a project.