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Text-To-Speech for Long Posts

Posted: 27 Nov 2006, 20:26
by curious_sb
Long Posts.

I mean no disrespects to anyone when I say this, it's just my day job really makes me loathe sitting at a computer longer than I have to.

Basically I have a cool tip for anyone else who "in their hearts" really want to read the long posts, but really cant be bothered to stare at a screen for that long.

I mean, don't get me wrong, the long posts are really great, I just find after an 8 hour shift in front of a terminal I really hate having to trawl through a massive post, to get all the juicy gossip.

I feel guilty saying that, because I am a Moderator, so its kind of my job to read all the posts. But I love hearing the stories you guys have, so heres what I do to get round it.

Download this cool (and FREE) text to speech engine from READPLEASE. Its really good, and unlike windows text to speech that can only take a few lines of text. This bad boy can take whole books if you wanted to. So you have more than enough space to copy and paste long posts into the speech engine, then click play, and you can do whatever you want while you are listening to the posts.

http://www.readplease.com/english/downloads/

Please let me know what you think.

And sorry if I upset anyone, please keep posting the long stories, I love them, really.

EDIT, I have been using this tool for a while and know some issues and fixes so if anyone has tech issues getting it up and running, please PM me. It should be straightforward to install, but have been some known problems with Windows XP.

Posted: 27 Nov 2006, 20:46
by curious_sb
Also, yes text to speech is not brilliant, but this readplease does have some good voices with it that sound more human.

Posted: 27 Nov 2006, 23:09
by jake
I love text to speech, this is just what I need, thank's a lot!!! I'm sure to use this a lot :)

Posted: 29 Nov 2006, 21:15
by curious_sb
I may have exaggerated the amount of text the readplease engine can take, if anyone has read the fictional story "Loree takes the credit for this one" it takes about half to three quarters of that post, still, thats an awful lot of text!!

Posted: 29 Nov 2006, 22:39
by jake
I tried it, to read LoRee's story, I couldn't get into it, the voice was too robotic, so I ended up just reading it :(

Posted: 30 Nov 2006, 00:38
by curious_sb
Have you tried some of the other voices?

Posted: 30 Nov 2006, 09:18
by jake
HOw do you do that? I tried and I couldn't find where to do it.

Posted: 30 Nov 2006, 21:51
by curious_sb
xatm092 wrote:HOw do you do that? I tried and I couldn't find where to do it.
Image

Posted: 30 Nov 2006, 23:33
by jake
Okay I get it :oops:

Posted: 02 Dec 2006, 00:21
by curious_sb
hahah no worries

Posted: 02 Dec 2006, 00:27
by Venom
why dont you just use narrator built into windowsXP if you use that OS?

Posted: 02 Dec 2006, 00:38
by curious_sb
Never used narrator. This has load of voices and you can vary the speed and stuff. And its free. (ok so narrators built into XP.....) :oops:

Posted: 02 Dec 2006, 00:40
by Venom
so is narrator, and it has 3 voices and you can vary speed :P

Posted: 02 Dec 2006, 00:41
by curious_sb
Venom wrote:so is narrator, and it has 3 voices and you can vary speed :P
I'll have to have a look, cheers.

Posted: 02 Dec 2006, 00:41
by Venom
if you ever use the voice chat program called ventrilo, it uses the voices from narrator to do the text to speech engine :)