Quote:
Originally Posted by DuaneAA
I use TextAloud software( http://www.nextup.com/TextAloud/ ) and it will do the 'highlight a section of text and change the voice' like you are talking about. However I almost never do it for a couple of reasons.
First, if you are going to do that for a novel length document, it would take a lot of time to go through it line-by-line and implement this for every different character. I use this software mostly to proofread things I write, as I can 'hear' lots of typos that I don't see when I am reading it. And frankly, I like to listen to some of my stories while I am in the car to help motivate myself to keep working on them.
Second, I have occasionally used this TTS software to convert fanfiction or ebooks I have found and bought in RTF, which this software can convert. But going through a whole book written by someone else to set up the proper voices sort of defeats the point, as you will have now read the whole book in setting up the TTS version with distinct voices.
Third, the best, most natural sounding voices are sold as separate files and are rather expensive running $30-$50 each. It is difficult to justify that kind of money to have 10+ distinct voices available.
I have found one British female voice I really like (Rachel22 by Acapela) and I use it for everything. I have literally spent hundreds of hours listening to this voice read things to me and I am not tired of it yet. Perhaps once a year I troll through the voices that are currently available and I haven't found one I like better. If you would like to hear a sample of this voice, I have posted a link to the first chapter of one of my books at the bottom of this blog post. The sample runs 14 minutes: http://duaneaakre.wordpress.com/2012...-a-real-novel/
Hope this helps,
Duane |
Thanks for the tips Duane. Highlighting dialogue in my own work is what I was looking for. Why do you think voices are so expensive? I would have thought that software would be available to create voices.