Re: [gutvol-d] PG books used by visually impaired
On a related thread, does anyone know a user friendly way to make mp3s (or other format) with digitized voices out of P.G. e-books? Specifically looking for using typical software on Windows or Mac format machines. I have been able to get newer versions of Abode Acroread to "Read Out Loud" (an option under "View"). This has a couple problems, though: 1) Most people do not have access to Acrobat to make PDF files. Acroread is free and lets you read PDF files, but you need Acrobat (somewhat expensive) to make PDFs. 2) This is fine for listening at your computer, but I could not find a way to export to MP3 for listening to later using other equipment. Looked for an option in RealPlayer, but no dice. This is specifically for someone who drives alot, and wants books-on-disk. Thanks. -Dennis McCarthy anno Domini MMIIII, a.d. VI Id. Dec., dies Mercvri Feast of the Immaculate Conception -----Original Message----- From: Andrew Sly <sly@victoria.tc.ca> Sent: Dec 8, 2004 3:28 AM To: gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org Subject: [gutvol-d] PG books used by visually impaired Dear fellow PG volunteers, Here's a recent newsgroup posting that I came across showing more of the use that people do get out of the texts that we are creating. Andrew Newsgroups: alt.disability.blind.social Date: 2004-12-07 11:15:06 PST I often listen to books from the Gutenberg Project on my laptop. Most of those books are available from the US Library of Congress on audio cassette tape. So mainly, when I listen to a book on my laptop, it's because I forgot to order another book and am having a "book emergency". You know, when you finish one book and have nothig else to read and it's cold and rainy outside and there's nothing on TV? But I've listened to a lot of books on my laptop and after a while you don't notice the voice -- if it's a good book. _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d
Dennis McCarthy wrote:
On a related thread, does anyone know a user friendly way to make mp3s (or other format) with digitized voices out of P.G. e-books?
Specifically looking for using typical software on Windows or Mac format machines.
I have been able to get newer versions of Abode Acroread to "Read Out Loud" (an option under "View"). This has a couple problems, though: 1) Most people do not have access to Acrobat to make PDF files. Acroread is free and lets you read PDF files, but you need Acrobat (somewhat expensive) to make PDFs. 2) This is fine for listening at your computer, but I could not find a way to export to MP3 for listening to later using other equipment. Looked for an option in RealPlayer, but no dice.
This is specifically for someone who drives alot, and wants books-on-disk.
Thanks.
Not sure of the availability for whatever platforms you are using, but 'festival' will generate '.wav' files using the included 'text2wav' program. They should be easy to convert to mp3s. It's a monotone reading, but usable. More recent versions (i.e. FC3) seem to sound smoother (less computerized) than earlier ones (i.e. RH9). Don't know if this is because of the Linux or the festival versions. Comes standard with most recent RedHat and Fedora Core Linux installs, and probably others. Price is right (free). http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/manual/
It's a monotone reading, but usable. More recent versions (i.e. FC3) seem to sound smoother (less computerized) than earlier ones (i.e. RH9). Don't know if this is because of the Linux or the festival versions. Comes standard with most recent RedHat and Fedora Core Linux installs, and probably others.
My old Macintosh (OS 7.5-8) had different "voices" to choose from. One called "Cellos" was definitely not monotone--it sang the words in the melody of "Hall of the Mountain King". I wrote a little poem that fit the meter/rhythm and recorded it as my voice-mail answer--I still use it. The funniest part is that I occasionally receive messages that people have left, sung in the same melody (those are "keepers"!). Call me up for a demo. William J. Flis DE Technologies, Inc. 3620 Horizon Drive King of Prussia, PA 19406 610-270-9700 x130
Dennis McCarthy wrote:
On a related thread, does anyone know a user friendly way to make mp3s (or other format) with digitized voices out of P.G. e-books?
Specifically looking for using typical software on Windows or Mac format machines.
I have been able to get newer versions of Abode Acroread to "Read Out Loud" (an option under "View"). This has a couple problems, though: 1) Most people do not have access to Acrobat to make PDF files. Acroread is free and lets you read PDF files, but you need Acrobat (somewhat expensive) to make PDFs.
PDF creator is free, for Windows: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator Don't know how good it is, but if you're starting with PG plain text files, it shouldn't have too much problem. Or go the whole hog and use Open Office: free, and its word processor has an option to export to PDF That solves the first part under Windows. Getting Real to save the output as audio or MP3, I don't know. The only version of Real I've had much experience with (for Linux) just doesn't have any provision to allow saving output. It sounds as if Windows is the same. However, under Linux, the "mplayer" program can use the Real codec for playing Real audio, and will happily give a variety of outputs, including dumping raw sound output to disk for burning or re-encoding, but I have no idea if there's a free equivalent for Windows. You might have to resort to feeding one PC's soundcard line out to another PC's line in. These are synthesised voices we're talking about, so the loss in quality won't matter, if you're encoding to MP3 anyway.
Hi. Apologies in advance, but I don't have links for most of this software. Also, I can only comment on Windows. There are many easy ways to convert to mp3. Probably the easiest is something like TextAloud but I don't know how much it is and I don't use it. What I do is use an audio capture program. In other words, it records anything from the sound card output, whether MIDI, RA, etc. to wave or mp3. The problem is that it does this in real time so if the book is 10 hours long, it takes that long to record. This probably doesn't help, but newer OCR programs for the blind such as Kurzweil 1000 version 6 and up and newer versions of Openbook have this built-in. They will convert text to mp3 relatively quickly. If you have a specific book you want converted, I will do it for you. Write me off list. The particular capture program I use is RecAll. It is shareware but there are free alternatives. You can go here if you want a 30 day demo. http://www.sagebrush.com/
On 12/8/04 10:16 AM, "Dennis McCarthy" <nihil_obstat@mindspring.com> wrote:
On a related thread, does anyone know a user friendly way to make mp3s (or other format) with digitized voices out of P.G. e-books?
On the Mac side, Real Mac Software has a program called "Voice Box" which does just that. The functionality is actually built in to Mac OS X so all you really need is a simple AppleScript, but VoiceBox gives you more options. Alex. http://www.alexwilson.com - Alex Wilson Studios http://www.telltaleweekly.org - Funding a Free Audiobook Library
participants (6)
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Alex Wilson -
Dennis McCarthy -
Kevin Handy -
Malcolm Farmer -
Tony Baechler -
William Flis