Adding sound and spoken dialog

[DrJim]

While watching some of the latest worlds (great work - keep it up :D ), especially Madden's Space Fighters series, one of the things I missed was sound - especially spoken dialogue in place of the "text bubbles." If anyone would like to add some sound to their worlds, here are some of my favorite free resources. :cool:

ATT Labs Text-to-Speech Site - http://public.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php
Very robust and stable site. English, German, French and Spanish voices.
300 word maximum per download - no (known) limit on number of downloads.

Cepstral Text-to-Speech - https://www.cepstral.com/demos/
More voice control (pitch, speed and special effects). English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and "Character" voices. No stated limit per download but window for text is smaller than ATT window - no (known) limit on number of downloads.

BookRags - http://www.bookrags.com/Speech_synthesis#Freely_available_TTS_systems
No actual text-to-speech capability at this site, but excellent general reference material and many links to other sites.

Site for Sound Effects: http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/ - Several hundred sound effects of all types - excellent variety and multiple choices in many cases.

Site for Sound "Loops": http://flashkit.com/loops/ - Large number of background/theme short (around 1 min.) sound loops arranged by category. Mostly freeware but be sure to check before you use a loop.

The program "Tales Animator" (at http://www.dollysoft.com/index.htm and one of my favorites) also has a built in text-to-speech engine. If you don't want to use the program for a full video - it's 2D (there is a 3D "beta" version) and has no interactive capability - you can just use it to create a .wav file for your Alice program. (It will also read and mix MIDI files into your .wav output, a capability Alice lacks and has an option to just output the .wav file.)

Enjoy. :)

Jim

[madden]

I had just bought a recorder for voices, so I am going to be doing a remake on space fighters!

P.S thanks D.r Jim, I hope you'll enjoy my remakes.:D











cookies are super stars!!!

[Cyb3rAssassin]

Here is a free voice recording program that I use for making webcasts (podcasts)
Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)you record your voice and you can export as .mp3 and .wav but too export as mp3 you need lame_enc.dll which you can get Here (http://www.webhostxpress.net/~mitiok/lame-3.96.1.zip) This is a great program for recording anything you can think of all you need is Audacity and a microphone.

[DrJim]

Looks like a great link and program - thanks. :)

One of the tutorials particularly interested me:

http://www.edhsonline.org/other/audacity/

To quote from the introduction " you will learn the VERY BASICS on how to use ... Audacity ... do some simple edits on a .WAV file and have the option of creating an MP3 from the finished product. "

In addition to covering good basic skills, a couple of months ago there were several posting on reducing the file sizes of worlds and one major way was to use .mp3 files instead of .wav files - which this would address. (It's not too hard to do - but a little harder to do well.)

Jim

[PogoDaMonkey]

Heh, luckily our programming teacher saw a need for sounds and recording, and provided us with a version of Audacity, although I haven't found any uses for it, because all of the stuff we are doing now is simple (in my eyes), and not worth putting sounds into unless otherwise directed.:rolleyes:

[Cyb3rAssassin]

Yeah I have used a lot of voice recording programs and I think audacity is the simplest without sacrificing features its easy for a n00b to learn (which i was a month ago) I make a webcast(podcast) every month and this program i feel is very user friendly and I have just recently started using it too put sounds in my alice worlds.