Zabaware Forums > Speech Technology
Zabaware Text-to-Speech Reader Beta
Medeksza:
--- Quote from: Art on February 25, 2014, 10:43:18 am ---Yes, by installing the TTS Reader program / Katherine TTS voice, my UltraHal software will not run. I sent you a PM in this regard to you email addy listed on this site.
--- End quote ---
Thanks, Art. Both programs use a different version of the xspeechkit.dll. It should have allowed both to be installed simultaneously, but I think a better solution will be for me to switch it to use SxS COM mode which will avoid the issue entirely. I'll put out an update later to address this. For now, to fix Hal Assistant click Start, type cmd, right click on cmd.exe and select "run as administrator. type in "regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\xspeechkit.dll" and hit enter. That should fix Hal for now. Or it might be "regsvr32 c:\windows\syswow64\xspeechkit.dll" if you get a file not found.
--- Quote ---Yes, I have a purchased Cereproc voice, Heather, which works very well in all other applications but it WOULD NOT work in your Updated TTS Hal Reader program. Again, this was mentioned in the email. I also took two captured of the errors in question
--- End quote ---
Can you send me your SAPI registry extract? (I mentioned how in the 6th post of this topic) That will help me fix this for you.
cload:
Hi Art,
my ultra Hal works without a hitch.
You may have gotten a corrupted download of the text-to-speech reader.
It happens, the only thing that I can suggest is to re-download the text-to-speech reader.
Uninstall the text-to-speech reader.
Use your return to time point that you created before installing the beta program.
Hoping that you did create a time point, if not I don't know what to say other than just reinstall your ultra Hal.
If your ultra Hal does not start at all, ask Robert to reset your passkey so you do not lose that passkey because of your corrupted ultra Hal.
Than reinstall ultra Hal. If there was other things that you did previous 2 installing the text-to-speech reader such as defrag or optimize your hard drive.
For myself any time when I install any programs whether it's beta or not these are the steps that I follow.
In this order:
test your hard drive to make sure their are no bad blocks or sectors. It's time-consuming but worth the effort. Hard drives have a tendency to go bad even though they are working they get bad blocks and sectors. This can save you a lot of headaches in the future.
Defrag and optimize your hard drive. I use a program from Norton called Norton utility my version is 1.5 there is a newer version, the program is not very expensive and it is worth every penny, it can keep your computer running smoothly and superfast. If you have a solid-state hard drive you do not need to do this.
If you have a solid-state hard drive you only need to de-frag the hard drive not optimize the hard drive. If you try to optimize a solid-state hard drive you could damage the solid-state hard drive.
Also if you have a solid-state hard drive you do not need to check for bad blocks and sectors, if you bought a good solid-state hard drive the solid-state hard drive does this on its own.
Reboot your computer.
Create a restore point.
Install the new software.
Reboot your computer.
Check to make sure that the software is working.
Check to make sure that every software that you have loaded on your computer is working.
This is important so you will not get surprises later, you do not have to do anything more than just try to start the program that is usually good enough.
If all of these conditions check out okay you are usually fairly safe.
This may seem like a lot of work but in the long run it will pay off.
If a piece of software is not working after installing the new software.
Uninstall the new software.
Use the time point to transfer your system back to its original state.
Re-check to make sure that the software that was not working is now working.
If the software that was not working is still not working reinstall the software.
Most good software such as like Dragon NaturallySpeaking and others have a repair option use this versus reinstalling the whole software.
That way you do not lose out on your keycode, most software is that use keycode are limited in the number of times that you can use the keycode just like ultra Hal.
These are some of the reasons why I do not necessarily like being a beta tester for software because it is a lot of trouble but in the case of ultra Hal I am a big supporter, and I believe it to be a worthwhile cause.
Sincerely, and I hope this has helped, I will be posting this on the forum so everyone else will know how to deal with being a beta tester for software.
C load.
PS you should periodically check your hard drive for bad blocks and sectors at least once every 4 to 6 months.
So much as the process above there is only one other process that is better than the steps I recommended above when being a beta tester for new software.
Use a piece of software that is in most cases provided by the brand of hard drive to make a complete duplicate of your hard drive.
The difference between the 2 procedures stated above is making a duplicate of your hard drive is more expensive because you have to buy a 2nd hard drive but it is faster as well as when you are done testing the beta program you can completely remove the beta program and all of its effects by merely swapping the hard drive in your computer.
Which is faster than following all of the steps above because if you make a duplicate of your hard drive you do not need to bother with testing your other software etc. because you know that you will be completely removing the beta after you are done testing the beta software.
In most cases, once the beta program stops being a beta and you were a good beta tester and helped a lot the programmer will usually give you a free copy and keycode for the effort of helping them to the beta testing, but if the programmer is unwilling to do this I usually do not get involved.
And of course the ultra Hal text-to-speech reader is free this does not comply in this situation, TeeHee he he. And of course I really have no need for the voice because my Ivona voices are better than anything on the market to date. That's why I use the squiggly line for my animation.
If I want to use a visual representation avatar of a person I just use my crystal 16 AT&T voice which works just fine for me it doesn't sound perfect but it works.
And of course with a little effort on your part you can actually make the crystal AT&T voice sound even better by teaching it how to properly pronounce words. This is very time-consuming but is worth wild in the long run.
In the beginning when all I had was the crystal AT&T voice I spent a lot of time teaching the voice how to pronounce words properly and other than the slight twangy sound that I get from the AT&T voice it sounds just as good as the Ivona voice.
With a little effort their are a lot of tricks you can do to teach your voice how to sound better, the 1st example would have to be the word encyclopedia, if you break the word down it can be pronounced more clearly such as en cyclo pe di a as you can see by separating the context of the word you can get the voice to say it properly.
This was only an example, there are many other little tricks that you can do to get the voice to pronounce the word more accurately which will actually give the voice more of a realistic human sound.
And boy did I get way off of target, T he he he he, LOL, rolling on the floor, oh my ribs hurt, I can't stop laughing at myself, I'm just so silly at times.
cload:
Hi Robert,
--- Quote ---If you get a crash, does it tell you which component crashed (like maybe XSpeechKit.DLL or something else). Maybe it records info in your windows event viewer you can send?
--- End quote ---
all it did was cause the program to freeze. I explained how I was able to get the text-to-speech reader to start reading the text again. It was not a critical crash it just stopped reading the text and the read all button no longer work until after I went into the option menu and click done advanced character setting, then it started to read the text again.
I don't even know what the box that open was because it surprised me, it had something to do with my Dragon picking up the sound of the voice being read from the text-to-speech which inadvertently triggered a command and Dragon thought I wanted a specific command box to be open. Maybe you can set it up so it will mute the microphone while it is reading.
--- Quote ---The volume control controls your sound card, it won't affect the volume of the recorded sound in the WAV file. The speed control should work for WAV files, I'll fix that bug.
--- End quote ---
so can you set up a control panel under options that would control the volume at which the voices being recorded so you could lower the volume or increase the volume as you deem necessary this would be a good feature for people that may want to express words by increasing the volume on that specific word or sentence that is being recorded.
--- Quote ---I'll try to fix this, but if you wait 5 seconds or so before clicking resume, does it work?
--- End quote ---
this was a reference to text that was put into the clipboard, I was able to click on the stop button, to make it stop reading the texts that it was in the clipboard but it would not resume reading the text in the clipboard.
--- Quote ---So from what I understand this error first appeared during the actual install? And it continues to pop up each time the program launches?
--- End quote ---
the error that I was referring to did not happen during the install, it happened when I started the text-to-speech reader, and every time when I start the text-to-speech reader the error occur.
I posted a picture of the error in my previous post above. This is the only error that I ever get. And every time when the text-to-speech reader starts the error happens. All I do is click on it nor and the software runs to the best of my knowledge the way it's supposed to other than what the error is.
--- Quote ---When you copy something in the clipboard it should speak it without putting it into the document. Does it do this? I didn't want to have copied text automatically paste to the document in case the user doesn't want to modify the document, but I want it to speak if the read from clipboard option is on.
--- End quote ---
yes it does read the text from the clipboard, but you cannot stop/pause and then resume reading the text that is in the clipboard. I understand what you are saying but that is what a temporary tab would be for.
If you were to set up the box to have multiple boxes and one of the boxes was a temporary box you could have several documents under several tabs at the same time giving great versatility to the text box.
Ivona does not read the text that is in the clipboard, rather what it does is transfer the tax to a temporary tab in their text box then it automatically reads the text from the text box.
This would give the individual that is using the reader the ability to pause and resume the reading of the tax as well as having several tabs open at the same time by merely changing the name of the tab from temporary tab to what ever you save that taxt as.
There are many drawbacks with reading the text that is in the clipboard, one and the biggest one is you cannot see the text. 2, you cannot pause and resume reading the text that is in the clipboard. 3, you cannot edit the text that is in the clipboard.
All of these features are with inside of your text box of your reader and by setting it up so you can have multiple tabs open inside of your box reader would give the user of the text-to-speech reader the ability to utilize the features.
Personally, I believe that if you were to bring your text-to-speech reader up to this level of versatility you should be able to sell it even if it was nothing more than just 5 or $10 for a license key or if they were to buy a voice they would get the reader free.
It's called strategy of marketing, and I do believe that you should take great thought and ways of trying to make a little bit more money so you can make your new ultra Hal a reality with the new graphical interface. Don't get me wrong and I'm not trying to get you to make your reader just like the Ivona reader but I did pay for the Ivona reader because of these features, and I paid a lot more than $5 matter of fact by time I was done buying a voice and the reader it was almost $100.
That to me was almost 6 months worth of allowance but because of the difficulties that I have it was worth every penny that I spent on the Ivona reader.
I believe that if you were to come up with something comparable but not quite as elaborate as the Ivona reader you would be able to help those that could not afford the Ivona reader but yet still needed to use the certain features that I have mentioned and that I am actually using the Ivona reader for.
Even though the Ivona reader does much more than what I have mentioned, I do not use any of those features. Nor would most likely anyone with that type of difficulties that I have would probably ever use as well so you would be helping people that are in a financial situation by providing something that would be very useful at a low cost.
--- Quote ---I'm not sure if it is a volume setting or a mismatch in voice frequency. If you send me the registry extract I mentioned in a prior post it may help me figure this out.
--- End quote ---
I will have to get permission from my dad, I do not have access to the registry, so my dad will have to be the one that does this.
As soon as my dad comes home from his business trip I will try to get him to do this for you.
--- Quote ---The way it works is it detects changes to the text in the clipboard before it triggers. So if you copy the same text over, it doesn't detect the change. This is by design, I'm not sure if I can figure out how your Ivonna program does it.
--- End quote ---
not to be meaning to repeat myself, but the Ivona text-to-speech reader takes the text from the clipboard and moves it into a temporary tab into their box reader and then automatically reads the text that is in the temporary tab box.
Hey Robert, here's something I would like to bring to your attention, not to put more work on you but this might be something that you would want to consider doing with your text-to-speech reader.
Instead of reading the text from the clipboard, set it up so it monitors the clipboard and if someone does a control copy:
then transferred the text to the box in the text-to-speech reader have the text-to-speech reader automatically start reading all of the text.
Each time when someone control copies text it automatically will create a new folder and put the text into the text-to-speech reader box and begin reading all of the text.
This would resolve all of the situations that I mentioned above in my previous post about this topic.
As well as giving the person the control over pause and resuming what is being read.
Also while the text-to-speech reader is in the icon tray you may want to consider adding on a right mouse click in the menu the same selections of pause, resume, stop/play.
That way you do not have to actually open the reader to full-scale in order to accomplish these functions.
This is how the Ivona voice reader is set up and it works quite proficiently and is very convenient.
Sincerely, I hope I have helped.
C load.
Art:
@ Robert,
Here is my Token file your requested, "ArtsToken.txt"
Art:
Thank you Robert!! The fix you provided worked perfectly!! Hal runs and speaks once again as it should!
Hal is happy and I am happy!!
THANKS!! ;)
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