Author Topic: Suggestions for TTS Voice Acting Software  (Read 1364 times)

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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Suggestions for TTS Voice Acting Software
I am strongly considering using pre-recorded TTS files for my overhaul of Den5's TBP campaign "In The Beginning", aside from voice files captured from the movie itself... of course.  I learned from Admiral Nelson that for the recent SAH overhaul, Replica Studio was used, and while I am intrigued, I was also hoping for a more cost-free alternative.  Can anyone point me to some cost-free alternatives?

I was recently investigating Balabolka as an option, but after installing the program, I am puzzled to find that it only recognizes 3 of the 13 Microsoft English voices that I've downloaded.  I've sent an email to the only contact link I could find on the page, with hopes that it will lead to someone both willing and able to provide useful feedback, but if anyone here has experience with this program and could help me out, it would be appreciated as well.
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Re: Suggestions for TTS Voice Acting Software
Festival (http://festvox.org/) is a free speech synthesis system with several voices working best on Linux.
A demo including several voices is online here: https://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/onlinedemo.html
A good starting point IMO is the archwiki page https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Festival
or the (German) Ubuntu wiki page https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Festival/

Some time ago, I wrote a script and necessary engine functionality (thread)
to integrate festival into FSO at runtime. I abandoned that project as unsuitable, mainly because speech synthesis
on longer messages within message chains took far too long to be useful.

Also, manually adjusting speed and pitch of the generated speech will certainly allow much better quality,
and 'terms of art' are painful to listen to unless the correct intonation is annotated.

As much as my time allows, I am interested in contributing to a workflow for creating such voice files,
including the setup of a WSL image with the necessary tools, provided enough time and suitable upload space.

  

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Suggestions for TTS Voice Acting Software
The Balabolka program creator responded personally to my inquiry, and provided me with the proper batch file to activate all of the voices.  At the very least, I can use this to create some placeholder audio files, and then replace them with something better quality down the line if I want.
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Offline Darius

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Re: Suggestions for TTS Voice Acting Software
I've made heavy use of CereProc
https://www.cereproc.com/
For UK accents which is quite handy, most stuff out there tends to be US accents. Just use the embedded demo tool in the browser.

https://ttsmp3.com/ gets used a lot too for Spanish/European accents. Just need to disable ad block on their site to use but it's worth it i find.


I've recently started using ElevenLabs voice Cloner/voice synthesiser program, which is browser hosted with processing done on their side. It's quite high quality and if you haven't got many lines, quite doable without paying anything.

https://beta.elevenlabs.io/

If you don't mind putting in your credit card details you'll get the usual "1 month free, cancel after 1 month" starter subscription but it's high quality and a decent enough price that I may continue my subscription just to have a go at creating custom voices.

I've used it for several voices here.

« Last Edit: February 08, 2023, 03:30:18 am by Darius »

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Suggestions for TTS Voice Acting Software
Thanks for those suggestions, Darius.  I've been continuing to use Balabolka so far, despite a few mildly irritating glitches, and limits on the number of voices available to me.

I tried those 3 sites you provided.  CereProc doesn't seem to have a download option in the test box.  TTSMp3 does have one, but both this and CereProc lack some fine-tuning controls I've used in Balabolka, primarily the ability to chose reading speed and pitch.  You can also adjust these down to a per-word basis, which I've been using to emphasize words to make my lines more than a simple read-out.  On the other hand, ElevenLabs seems to figure that out on it's own to some degree, thanks to the fact that the test line I was using, employed BOLDING on words I wanted emphasized.  Eleven got it and used it, the others didn't.  The only disappointment was the lack of test voices at Eleven Labs, though I'm guessing that there are a LOT more available if I went for the Demo itself.

I think I'll stick with my original plan of using Balabolka for now, and then maybe graduate to something a little more professional once I'm more certain about the dialogue.  ElevenLabs DOES seem like a front-runner for that though.
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Offline Iain Baker

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Re: Suggestions for TTS Voice Acting Software
Could you send me the batch file for balabolka please? I use it quite a bit so being able to use the other voices would be great. I’m guessing once you have recorded the sound clip as an MP3 you could then use audio editing software or even voice changing software to make it sound better.

Audacity is free 😊

https://youtu.be/lOmKuYMwjsk

https://youtu.be/gooIrcZEVSE
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Suggestions for TTS Voice Acting Software
I was emailed the link for the patch file:

http://www.cross-plus-a.com/mobile.windows10.zip

The instructions on how to enable them are in a readme in the zip.

I'm still having some problems with Balabolka that are making it awkward.  Basically, if I make too many pitch changes in my recording, when it changes to another sentence, the next word with a pitch change will be followed by a delay as though it was changing sentences.  At first, I just loaded the file in Ocenaudio (which is my editor of choice) and eliminated the delay.  Unfortunately, the next word after the delay is always given an un-commanded pitch-change, breaking up the flow.  My solution to this, has been to break up my message into chunks, as many as necessary, and then stitch them together in Ocenaudio.  Unfortunately, this is time-consuming.
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Offline wesp5

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Re: Suggestions for TTS Voice Acting Software
I have used the VoiceMaker webpage for voices I need for my Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines Unoffiial Patch, and I was quite surprise that just registering gives you access to a lot of great variations. The only free use limit is the number of characters convertable in a certain amount of time as far as I remember.

 

Offline ShivanSpS

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Re: Suggestions for TTS Voice Acting Software
Ive used the Azure TTS a lot, they have a free demo.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/cognitive-services/text-to-speech/#features

It will be difficult to make a full proyect with that because there is a daily limit until it starts to fail, but just something to keep in mind.

 

Offline Iain Baker

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Re: Suggestions for TTS Voice Acting Software
Another issue with non-prerecorded TTS in FSO is that you can't change its speed, which causes all sorts of out od synch issues since the TTS is generally too slow. Being able to speed it up like in pretty much any TTS program would probably help quite a bit.

I tried changing my global narration settings in Windows 10 to see if that would work in FSO but no luck. Does anyone have any ideas?
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Suggestions for TTS Voice Acting Software
I've managed to find some work-arounds for my issues with Balabolka.  As mentioned, if I have a multi-sentence recording to make, if I perform a pitch change one sentence, as soon as I try to make a pitch change in a following sentence, the adjusted word would be followed by an un-commanded period of silence, before proceeding to the next word.  At first, I simply booted it up in ocenaudio and deleted the offending silence.  Then I began to notice that not only was there a silence, but the subsequent word would have an un-commanded pitch change applied to it, as though it was beginning a new sentence, so just deleting the space would result in a very odd-sounding sentence.  For some time, my solution was to break up my vocal dialogue into chunks, one per sentence, or longer if no pitch changes were implemented.  I would  then stitch them back together in Ocenaudio... a time-consuming process.  For a time I had a third option, which was to use a feature to manually insert audio breaks, which I used in place of periods, fooling it into thinking it was one long sentence.  This worked most of the time, but I would occasionally encounter another break during a long message.  Now, I've discovered that all I need to do is perform a hard return after ever sentence, as though each was a separate paragraph.  This appears to work, though the paragraph break seems to create a break delay longer than your standard period does, so I need to trim each one slightly.
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Offline Iain Baker

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Re: Suggestions for TTS Voice Acting Software
Handy 👍

Just a thought, have you tried using a short hyphen / dash / whatever in place of a period? (The one that causes a slight pause that is slightly shorter than a period but hardly noticeable? Does this do anything to help the pitch change issues?
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