Hi Sarah, David, and Zack, I'm late to this thread, but I have a few quick comments. If the workflow Sarah uses is the Services menu option, "Add to iTunes as a Spoken Track", it will use the default encoding format for the m4a file. This is 128 kbps variable bit rate at CD quality sampling (44.1 kHz). Changing your iTunes import preferences (Command-comma for the preferences menu) under button for "Import Settings" on the General tab, from "iTunes Plus" to "Spoken Podcast" (32 kbps, 22.05 kHz with voice filtering) will make the resulting file about 4 times smaller. Speeding up the voice speaking rate by sticking an embedded command at the start of the selected text, such as: [[rate 400]] (that's two left brackets followed by the word "rate" followed by a space and the number "400" followed by two right brackets) will make the resulting file even smaller (and shorter).
I'm sure that text to speech programs that record don't use iTunes Plus music settings for the program. If anyone bought Assistiveware's GhostReader as an inexpensive add-on with the InfoVox voices, that program also lets you record text to a file, and even has an undocumented feature that lets you switch between the InfoVox iVox (Acapela group) voices on your system mid-text, so you can change voices (and languages) in the middle of your recording. GhostReader is not designed for visually impaired users, but is quite useful. HTH. Cheers, Esther On Feb 10, 2012, at 1:34 PM, Sarah Alawami wrote: > Acutally I round the work around maybe. I left the dialogue there for about > half an hour and came back and the full 30 page document showed up as an m4a > file. If I have to do this every time tha'ts rediculous but Im willing to be > patient. > On Feb 10, 2012, at 3:25 PM, David Griffith wrote: > >> I think this may be a limitation. I am also using Lion and when I tried to >> do this with a 30 page text document last week it completely failed. >> As you say small clips are fine but anything substantial and I-tunes does >> not appear able to cope . >> I guess I could split the file up into smaller segments but I am afraid I >> could not be bothered and went instead to use the free speech utility in >> fusion under Windows. >> >> Regards >> >> David Griffith >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [email protected] >> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sarah Alawami >> Sent: 10 February 2012 21:48 >> To: mac access list iOS Accessibility >> Subject: a perplexing iTunes issue >> >> Hello to all. >> >> I want to convert a 30 or 40 page rtf document to speach using the >> workflow. that ships with lion. I'm running os 10.7.3 and I noticed that >> it will convert a 30 second clip fine but it stops 8 or sometimes even 20 >> seconds in to the selected 30 page document. I made sure all text was >> selected. What do I need to do to fix this? I need to get this done way >> before monday. >> >> Thanks all. <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
