The need to have more than one voice in a screencast to provide point/counterpoint narration and the need to provide narration in languages other than English with a budget of zero. See “Enhanced Dictation in MacOS X 10.9 as an STT Engine for Extant Audio Files” at: Ģ) Next, I tried to create a workflow for creating narration from text to address several needs.
Here are a few of my recent blog posts on various aspects of speech synthesis that can be related to screencasting and ePublishing.ġ) I am also interested in video accessibility, particularly subtitles/captioning so I began with trying to use speech-to-text in order to produce transcripts of narrated video that might subsequently be turned into subtitles. As you have demonstrated here, speech synthesis can be a very useful part of screencasting. On my ePublishing blog, I’ve been exploring how screencasts can add significantly to the value of eBooks and, because I am an educator, eTextbooks as well. Recently (since MacOS X 10.7 – Lion), Apple has been improving the many ways that MacOS X and iOS handle speech, including text-to-speech (TTS) as demonstrated here and speech-to-text (STT) which is what Siri uses to understand our questions and commands.
I believe that Mac said, “I sure am glad to get out of that bag.” Speech synthesis, called MacinTalk for many years, has been a part of the Mac experience ever since Steve Jobs pulled the first Mac out of its carrying bag on stage. This is a great demo of the Insert Speech Clip feature in ScreenFlow. Experiment, and show us what you can come up with! Have you ever used this feature? Will you ever use it? It is definitely tons of fun. While this can be an acceptable substitute for a human voice, I would much rather use it for flavor! Adding in some goofy, robotic voice tracks over your video can really help to spice things up. It is always awkward sitting at a café and speaking crisply and clearly to your computer! It can also help when you don’t have access to a microphone, or the location you are recording in is not suited to audio recordings…like Guitar Center. I often like to create recordings in places where I don’t feel comfortable using my own voice. Here is a little background info on some of the characters built into ScreenFlow!įrom a logistical and rational standpoint, using this feature can be quite helpful. That being said, this is an awesome feature! I like the “Alex” voice, but that is just my preference. The ability of a computer generated voice to mimic such an intricate process is far from perfect. Type a phrase or two into the resulting box, choose your character, and ScreenFlow will turn your text into speech! Now before we get real deep into this, I want to point out that the human voice is incredibly complex. Under the Insert menu in ScreenFlow there is an often unknown and overlooked option to add a speech clip to your ScreenFlow project. Well maybe Alex can help! Or Victoria, Vicky, Bruce, Fred and Kathy! Who are these helpful people? They are our friends built into ScreenFlow! Insert Speech Clip Need a goofy sidekick? What about a recorded warning message? Or, maybe you just aren’t comfortable with using your own voice in videos…