Re: Tips for Text to Audio (long) [was Re: Text to Audio File]

[Jacob Schmude]

Hi
Yes, pro is more accessible due to its interface being completely  
rewritten in cocoa. In functionality it is very similar to Amadeus II  
(some keyboard shortcuts are different though), and there are a very  
few mislabeled buttons, mostly on the toolbar. However, these buttons  
do have help tags, so no biggy. I've not yet found a feature of  
amadeus pro that I can't access, including the new multitrack  
functions, but there are things that I haven't played with yet. Of  
course there are tricks to working with it, but it's simple enough  
once you get the hang of it.
Regarding creating audio books, I had to use Amadeus to convert to AAC  
as well. This is due to the fact that iTunes can only do 44.1 or 32khz  
AAC encoding, and apple's TTS generates AIFF at 22khz, meaning that if  
you encode at a higher rate than it was recorded at, you get some  
nasty artifacts. I'm sure quicktime pro can do this, and I know that  
max can as well, I just used Amadeus to do it because I already had it  
open. If anyone's found a way to get iTunes to encode at 22khz let me  
know, but I don't even see an option for sample rate. To get it to  
32khz you check the optimize for voice checkbox and set the stereo bit  
rate to 64 kbps (setting it lower might work also).

On Jan 20, 2008, at 5:35 PM, Esther wrote:

Hi Jacob,

If you're using Amadeus Pro for your audio books, and ChapterTool
with an xml file (if you make chapter markers), then you can disregard
most of my comments, as you've politely noted <grin>.  You are,  
indeed,
going a different route.

I'm curious, because although I haven't tried Amadeus Pro, Amadeus II
has accessibility issues.  (I recall that you posted a long time ago  
that
you used Amadeus II).  Is Pro more accessible?

Cheers,

Esther

Hi
Thanks for the tips. The way I make my iPod-style audio books is a  
bit
different, however. In all cases, they are one AAC file, not many.
This is for two reasons: so my audio book list isn't cluttered, and  
so
bookmarks don't get saved separately per file which is a pain if I
want to listen to a book from start to finish. In the cases where I  
do
want chapter marks, I use Apple's chaptertool with a markup file.  
This
prevents any AAC header issues (as I've seen interesting things  
happen
even when cbr files are joined, particularly regarding metadata being
recognized improperly by iTunes). This is the same tool that join
together uses. If I do have to join multiple files, I use a sound
editor (amadeus pro in my case) to join them and save it as one file,
then run chaptertool on it if I desire chapter marks. The process can
be a bit tedious, but well I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my
books :).
A note to anyone converting text, the rate values in speech manager  
do
not necessarily match up to the values in Voiceover.


On Jan 20, 2008, at 4:08 PM, Esther wrote:

Hi Jacob, Shaun, and Others,

JS: Is there a program to convert a text file to a spoken audio  
file?
I'd like to make iPod audiobooks out of my book collection, which I
currently have as straight text files.

SJ: Maybe use Automator to do the conversion from start to finish.

JS: Hi Shaun
Wow, it's amazing what automater can do. I sometimes forget it's
there, but yes, automater's text to audio file function will serve  
my
needs quite well. I'll take care of the conversion with iTunes  
since I
need to convert to AAC and then make the file bookmarkable.

Check the mailing list archives discussion in early December about
automator actions.  The big sticking point in the early  
discussions of
automator actions was using speeded up voices for the original
encoding.  Jane got a response on how to do this from the
Accessibility
folks:

http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40macvisionaries.com/msg24218.html

Otherwise, you need to go through something like VisioVoice or
GhostReader to get sped up voices, and you need to allow for about
10 MB for each minute of recorded speech in the default recording  
mode
(AIFF or Audio Interchange File Format).  Also, if you convert to
compressed
AAC format as part of your automator action, I think you have to set
the
iTunes preferences for the amount of compression before you run an
automator script, since these options can't be passed as arguments:

http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40macvisionaries.com/msg24722.html

The archive post discussed MP3 format settings, AAC settings are
similar.
I remember  that Darcy was experimenting with Audio Hijack  
captures as
AAC files as part of automator, and it may be possible to make that
work.
That could save you some working space.

Another few pointers: it's probably easiest to just create separate
AAC tracks
section by section.  However, there is a "Join Together" AppleScript
at
Doug Adam's AppleScripts for iTunes site that you may be able to  
use.
One major requirement for the Join Together AppleScript is that the
files be encoded at constant bit rate because that allows the header
for the joined audio file to be accurately created without having to
re-encode
the complete joined file.

Well, with QuickTime 7.3 the default encoding for AAC files changed
from
"constant bit rate" to "average bit rate".  That means you can no
longer simply
stick the audio files together and predict what the legal heading
will be for
the combined files, since it will depend on the fluctuating bit
rates that were
used for both segments.  Instead of seeing 128 kbps for the bit rate
on the
Get Info summary page for your music, you might see anything from
120-129
kbps.  If you do want to be able to join AAC files (and you may not
want to
bother), you'll have to use a script called "Rip AAC Old School  
v0.9"

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=ripaacoldschool

(Ignore this if you don't care about joining AAC files).  This
solution only
works for Leopard; there's no option to get constant bit rate AAC
under
Tiger if you've upgraded QuickTime to 7.3 or above.

And if you've just updaed your iTunes to 7.6, make sure you get a  
new
versions of the MakeBookMarkable AppleScript:

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=makebookmarkable

so you don't get a timeout error when you select multiple tracks.

Good luck and let us know how it works out.

Cheers,

Esther