From Scratchy to Natural! Adding VTML Magic to Text-to-speech Narration

Online Events Archive

Online Forums 2014 - June 13, 2014

Recording audio can be an expensive affair, sometimes requiring a professional voice artist, an audio-recording studio, and expensive equipment and software. Moreover, if any audio edits are required at a later stage, you might need to redo the entire recording process. So why not skip the human element and just use a text-to-speech engine?

Participants in this session will learn how generating audio using text-to-speech engines enables eLearning designers and developers to quickly add narration to their eLearning courses at low cost. Because computer-generated audio often sounds mechanical, though, it’s generally not usable for professional courses, so you need to make the audio sound more natural. You’ll learn how to use VoiceText Markup Language (VTML) to improve the sound of generated audio by adding pauses and changing pitch, volume, and speed. You’ll also learn best practices for using computer-generated audio in your eLearning courses.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use VTML tags for text-to-speech voices
• How to use VTML tags to generate natural-sounding audio
• How to add text-to-speech in eLearning courses
• Best practices for using text-to-speech in eLearning courses

Audience:
Novice-to-intermediate instructional designers and developers with basic eLearning course-development skills.

Handout(s)

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Recording

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