Voice control

[dasadler]

I just installed the NextUp Talker program for windows and have a comment plus a couple of questions.

---Comment---
The email address in the help file is not valid. When I sent an email, I received the following response:
Your message wasn't delivered to support@talkforme.com because the address couldn't be found, or is unable to receive mail.

The response was: 550 No Such User Here

---Questions---

1) When I make an entry in the input area... how do I insert pauses in the sentence?

2) How do I influence the pronunciation to add emphasis (!!!) or interrogative (???)? For example, "Stop that!!" or... "Are you hungry?"

[Jim Bretti]

Thanks for letting me know about the email address in the help file, we'll fix that.

For inserting pauses in the text, look under the main menu for Insert -> Pause. You'll see a submenu of predefined pause valuse, and you can enter your own pause value as well.

Handling emphasis from TTS voices is harder. If you're using Acapela voices the post at viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6727 may be helpful. Mostly, this causes Acapela voices to pronounce some words like 'cough', and with some words, there are inflection changes.

Another option could be to embed audio clips in your text. From the main menu, use Insert -> Audio Clip. The idea would be to configure some small sound files to insert in the text where you want to place emphasis, surprise, laughter, etc.

[dasadler]

Thanks for the reply Jim. The reason I asked about question marks influencing speech is because I saw a demo on youtube of a guy using TextAloud and he was able to change voice inflection by inserting punctuation.

Is there any chance that could be considered for a future enhancement?


Oh, I appreciate the tip on pauses... I did see that before but was confused about its use. After your reply, I figured out how to use it.

[Jim Bretti]

This question comes up quite often, we will definitely watch for improvements we can make in this area.

[dasadler]

Thank you - I suspect the Advanced Pronounciation Editing with Phonemes might be a good place to incorporate that. Maybe something as simple as an upward inflection for a question mark.. just an idea, I am sure your speech scientists will do better than that.