Flash and TTS

[wcthrill]

Id like to create a site where a user can have access to a animated character that they can download to their site and use with text to speech. Is this possible with Flash MX?

[ugoDesigns]

I considered trying somthing like this a while ago but I didn't get too far. This could get you started though.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/flash...ter/hack52.pdf

[wcthrill]

But this sounds (no pun intended) way too intense. I was hoping more for a plug in that could do the trick.

[steve worswick]

That looks pretty decent. Any idea where this speech_final.fla can be found?

[cptncaveman]

I realize this is an old thread, but I found it while searching for related info. Thought someone might find this useful.

The speech_final.fla can be found here:

http://examples.oreilly.com/flashhks/

[ugoDesigns]

Thanks for the link! I've been looking for those resources for... well, years! Its just renewed my interest in a few long forgotten projects

Any luck finding a script to convert text to allophones?

[cptncaveman]

funny you should ask. i'm primarily a php programmer. i found a php class that would convert text to phonemes/allophones. i downloaded wav files that corresponded with the phonemes, and got php to use sox.exe to combine the wavs based on the phonemes returned from the class.

- the php text-to-allophone/phoneme class kind of sucked. alot of work went into it, but it couldn't handle basic words. it would skip some entirely. i modded it to force it to create the phoneme list i wanted for a specific set of words, but even then...

- the wav files i downloaded were too robotic, too harsh. it was doing what i wanted, but it sounded like crap. they were the same as the wavs in the flash fla, with a slightly better sample rate.

- the flash fla has a very small set of allophones. i'm guessing the creator of the app only grabbed what he needed. there's about 20 more sounds that the fla doesn't account for.

- SO, after attempting to create my own text-to-phoneme rule list (daunting), i finally remembered that windows has a built-in speech api. and it sounds worlds better than anything i made. so i installed winbinder. it allows php to access windows api and dlls. and only within the past hour have i got it to work (with the help of various old forum threads, it talks!). but i'm pretty excited.

using the flash stuff, i got a pair of lips to move along with my voice. i made an EVP app with it as well. both are rather lame.

the best allophone wav files i could find came from another app that is free to download:

http://www.speechchips.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=13

download and install the app. it has a folder with the allophone wav files in it. also, with the app you can type in text and listen to it.

the only text-to-phoneme parser i found was the php class. other than that, the closest i got were theories and published papers on theories. i just don't have it in me to create an entire rule list (especially after reading some of those theories) which is why i went with the windows api.

here's a link to the php class:

http://www.podulator.com/objects.php?object_id=3

good luck!