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Free Text to Speech (TTS) Option for Animations

3dOutlaw3dOutlaw Posts: 2,471
in Freebies

I was curious about adding voice to some animated shorts I am attempting, and I came across Amazon Polly.  I never saw it before when I have looked.  Seems it may have been released in 2016?
Anyway, it is just what I was after, as you get a free (limited) year of access!  cheeky

Free Tier
The Amazon Polly free tier includes 5 million characters per month, for the first 12 months, starting from the first request for speech.

After that, its $4 for 1 million characters.

Hope it helps someone!

Comments

  • VIArtsVIArts Posts: 1,499

    Howeverr, does t inlude a license to upload vids it was used in to youtube? It's unfortunate that we'd have to pay thousands just to get one vyoice on youtube for only a year with most companies.

    if only there was a way to make our own...

  • Eustace ScrubbEustace Scrubb Posts: 2,698
    LightofHeaven said:

    Howeverr, does t inlude a license to upload vids it was used in to youtube? It's unfortunate that we'd have to pay thousands just to get one vyoice on youtube for only a year with most companies.

    if only there was a way to make our own...

    According to this,

    Unlike other solutions that require a royalty or charge a fee every time you replay previously generated audio, Amazon Polly allows for unlimited replays without any additional fees. These free replays extend to offline use as well. You can create speech files in a variety of standard formats, such as MP3 and OGG, and store these on devices such as a mobile phones or Internet of Things (IoT) devices for offline playback,

    it looks like the resultant audio files would be royalty-free.  On the other hand, if the billing (and the cap for free use) is based on character count, that sounds like it's based on string length, and would include every space, every punctuation mark, and twice as many billable characters in "Weight" as in "Ant" for the same number of phonemes. 

  • jimkluza_00106d944djimkluza_00106d944d Posts: 22

    I google'd this search string:

    generate file audio "text to speech"

    and found several free sites.  My $4 is MY $4 !

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,076

    I used to have a program that was a virtual assistent called Prody Parrot in the late 90s. Didn't really use it except to get a chuckle though.

  • VIArtsVIArts Posts: 1,499

    There are quite a few free TTS voices out there, yeah. I'd nearly thrown out a ton of cash, when i realized the voices were for personal use only. My research tol me that means you may not use the voices for public youtube videos unless you buy a yearly distribution license, which are apparently so costly they don' even  put he prices on their sites.

     

    Maybe this thread I found a few months ago will help exjplain what I meanop

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/1028441-good-quality-tts-voices-commercial-use.html

     

    AFAICT, Polly seems okay

  • SemicharmSemicharm Posts: 375
    3dOutlaw said:

    I was curious about adding voice to some animated shorts I am attempting, and I came across Amazon Polly.  I never saw it before when I have looked.  Seems it may have been released in 2016?
    Anyway, it is just what I was after, as you get a free (limited) year of access!  cheeky

    Free Tier
    The Amazon Polly free tier includes 5 million characters per month, for the first 12 months, starting from the first request for speech.

    After that, its $4 for 1 million characters.

    Hope it helps someone!

    Are the samples how it actually sounds? It's not bad for a sythized voice, but it still clearly sounds like a computer.

  • James_HJames_H Posts: 1,030

    That's a really useful link, thanks. I've been looking at using text to speech for voice overs, but have been put off by the licensing. I don't want to sell stuff, but the personal licenses for most tts just isn't at all useful, especially if you want some different voices. The versions that do allow use sound pretty dire, so this at least sounds fairly good, with a range of voices and flexible as to pricing. I suppose there is the drawback that Amazon is listening in, but I'm not sure that is really a problem.

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,076

    I'd think you and people you know voices run through some processing with Propeller Reason for example would be a cost effective alternative but you'd have to read everything into the mic before hand of course. 

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