Hi Kevin, Kevin Gibbs wrote:
> What do you mean when you're talking about sending a file to iTunes is > a spoken track? > Matt's original question was: Hey list. i notice that when I send a file to itunes as a spoken track, the voice is really slow. I went into system prefs and made sure the default speed was decently fast, but no matter what I do, its still slow. Matt was asking about making an audio file from a text selection. There are a few different ways to handle this, but one of the easiest ways is to use a Services menu option called "Add to iTunes as a Spoken Track". In order to have this show up in your "Services" menu options, you have to check this under your System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts tab entries. When this is enabled, you can select text (say, in a TextEdit document), then move to the menu bar and arrow down to the "Services" menu option in your application (Control-F2 or VO-M to move to the menu bar, VO-Right arrow to the application, arrow down to the menu, press "s" to move to "Services"), then VO-Right arrow to the sub-menu and select "Add to iTunes as a Spoken Track" in order to have your text turned into either an AAC or mp3 track (whichever your default import setting for itunes is set to) that shows up in your iTunes music library under the track name "Text to Speech". To check this item under your Service Preferences, you can navigate to the Keyboard Shortcuts tab in System Preferences. The easy way to get there is to simply go to the "Services Preferences…" at the bottom of the Services sub-menu, which will take you to the correct tab and pane to select services. So: 1. Control-F2 then VO-Right Arrow (to navigate to your application menu on the menubar, from any application) 2. VO-Down Arrow, press "s" and return (to navigate to the "Services" menu) 3. Arrow down to "Services Preferences…" and return 4. On the Keyboard shortcuts tab, navigate (VO-Right arrow) past the "Shortcut Categories" table (which will already be correctly set to "Services") to the "Keyboard Shortcuts" table, and interact 5. Use item chooser menu (VO-I) to find "Add to iTunes as Spoken Track". (You can also VO-Right arrow to the service name, and then arrow down the list to explore the options, but the list of services is rather long) 6. VO-Left arrow to the check box for "Add to iTunes as Spoken Track" and check it (VO-Space) 7. Optionally assign a keyboard shortcut of your choosing. (Be careful not to duplicate an existing shortcut that you use) VO-RIght arrow past the text description and VO-Space to activate a shortcut. Then type in the shortcut sequence you want to use (generally some combination of control, option, command, or shift, and letter keys). 8. Close the system preferences window (Command-W) Now when you want to convert text to a spoken track, select all with Command-A, and apply your shortcut. You'll find the new track in your iTunes music library (or you can check your "Recently Added" smart playlist to find the track.) This is an automatic transcription procedure, so it uses the default voice (Alex), and a default speech rate that you'll find quite slow. To change the speech rate, as Ian noted, you can insert a command at the start of the document that controls the rate: [[rate 300]] These speech controls are surrounded by two sets of brackets. If you want to read more about embedded speech controls (to control rate, volume, etc.), see the developer's documentation: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/SpeechSynthesisProgrammingGuide/index.html Embedded commands are described in the section titled "Techniques for Customizing Synthesized Speech" - > "Use Embedded Speech Commands to Fine-Tune Spoken Output. Voice selection is not selectable by embedded commands, so if you want to use another voice, you can write an Automator Script, or use GhostReader (a third party software from Assistiveware). HTH. Cheers, Esther -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
