Text to speech and then MP3

[Carlos Camacho]

I need an application for my own use, however, I think there may be a market for such and application.

I have a text file. It is a chat between two people. I want to assign a Mac voice for each person. Then have the Mac use its voice synth to read the text. The spoken text would be recorded to an mp3 file.

Text edit has text to speech. And there are various apps to record the audio output of the Mac to a file. However, I can't find a solution to easily set a different voice for each reply of the chat conversation. Using exiting tools, I would need to do text to speech each sentence, record to an audio file, and then combine the audio files -- very time consuming!!!

I need this app, but like I said, there is a potential market. Call centers often review their customer calls for training. More and more interaction occurs using live chat. Reviewing live chat conversations though isn't as automated as the various training technologies for phone call review. This app would make it much more simple to "hear" the chat conversation during training.

Of course if such an app exists, please let me know!

[Relro]

Hi Carlos,
For grins I put together an app that does most of what you asked for. It does not render the audio to MP3 but instead plays it back "live". It has variable speed controls for each voice, as well as overall speed, which IMO, is a little more flexible than rendering to MP3.

What's the format of the text file? My utility only reads a format like:
PersonA: blah blah blah
PersonB: blah blah blah
I.e., that each spoken line is on a line by itself, which has the speaker's name followed by a colon and then the spoken text.

Screenshot:
http://www.relro.net/images/ChatterLog1.png

I don't think it's ready to share publicly, but I'll PM you the link.

-Brent