login | register
Wed 09 of Jul, 2008 [05:13 UTC]

voip-info.org

History

Swift

Created by: shaneyoung,Last modification on Tue 12 of Feb, 2008 [14:19 UTC] by JustRumours

Swift from Cepstral


Swift can be used to create audio files from text (Text to speech). It's fairly fast and can easily be called from an AGI for on-the-fly text to speech (such as a weather report) or can be used to create static files while an application is in development.

To synthesize text from the command line:

swift -o /tmp/greeting.wav -p audio/channels=1,audio/sampling-rate=8000 "Welcome to asterisk."

To synthesize text from a text file

swift -p audio/channels=1,audio/sampling-rate=8000 -o /tmp/weather.wav -f /tmp/weather.txt

If you recently purchased a copy of swift from Cepstral, you may have a version which has some issues. See Changelog below.


Swift CHANGES

4.0.1 - January 31, 2006

New Features:
  • 'swift -t' shows each sentence at the time it is played. This is very
   handy for listening to text and seeing what it is saying as it says it.
  • New additional parameters to 'swift --register' and 'swift --reg-ports'
   to allow you to enter your voice or concurrency license information
   with a single command using arguments.  Run 'swift --help' for more
   information and examples.
  • 'swift --say-pgm-version' speaks version information.
  • 'swift --say-voice-version' speaks name, language, and version of
   currently loaded voice.  This can be used in conjunction with -n switch
   to set voice.
  • 'swift --say-all-voices' lists and speaks names, languages, and
   versions of all voices found on the system
  • Multiple text arguments are concatenated and spoken as one utterance.
   This causes the following two commands to be treated identically:
   
   swift -n David "Hello, how are you?"
   
   swift -n David Hello, how are you?
   
   Whereas before, the latter command would make four seperate calls to
   synthesize each word seperately.

Enhancements:
  • 'swift --help' now shows a much more readable help message, and
   inclues several usage examples.
  • When synthesizing text from standard input by using 'swift -f -', you
   can now signal a chunk of text to be synthesized by passing two consec-
   utive newline characters.
  • Improved output messages for errors, warnings, and other engine output
   
Bug Fixes:
  • FIXED: Input text starting with a hyphen is treated as a parameter
   switch.  For instance, something like "$swift '--The Raven--...'" will
   print out the Usage string, as if you've entered an invalid switch.
   NOTE: To signify the end of options, use "--" by itself.  For instance:
   
     ./swift -n William --events — "--The Raven" -o hello.wav
     
   Will speak, "The Raven,  Oh Hello dot wav" in Williams voice and
   will *not* create a wave file (the -o argument being treated as
   input text).

3.5.0 - November 30, 2005

New Features:
  • 'swift --voices' now shows information about the software in addition
   to the table of information about the installed voices.

3.4.2 - September 19, 2005

  • No Changes

3.4.1 - September 2, 2005

  • No Changes

3.4.0 - August 18, 2005

  • No Changes

3.3.3 - August 5, 2005

  • No Changes

3.3.2 - July 28, 2005

  • No Changes

3.3.1 - July 12, 2005

Bug Fixes:
  • FIXED: Setting swift.exe into phone mode and asking for event
   information causes a crash.
  • FIXED: 'swift -V' shows no lexicon information

3.3.0 - June 15, 2005

Bug Fixes:
  • FIXED: swift -m wave fails with an invalid NULL param error.
  • FIXED: Command-line swift will fail to play sound (wav, aiff) files
   from disk if no voices are loaded.
New Features:
  • If -m switch or text/content-type param isn't set, command-line swift
   is now able to do the right thing with the file based on its extension.
   For instance:

   'swift -f myWave1.wav myTextFile.txt myWave2.wav'

   Will play the two wave files and synthesize the text in the text file.

3.2.1 - April 01, 2005

  • No Changes

3.2.0 - March 14, 2005

  • swift --events now shows event information in a nicely formatted table.

3.1.1 - January 19, 2005

  • No Changes

3.1.0 - December 13, 2004

New Features:
  • Defaults to SSML mode for text parsing.
  • Save-as-wave can now be done via '-o filename' switch (No longer need
   to set 'audio/output-file' param).
  • '-f' switch can be used to specify multiple input files, by making a
   call like this:
     swift -f file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt
  • Ability to enter port license information.
  • Ability to have a phoneme list as input by specifying '-m phones'.
  • '-x' switch for loading a sound effects file (.sfx).
  • Can use '--register' switch with '-n voice' or with '-d directory'.

Bug Fixes:
  • SSML support now working. No longer crashes when making this call:
     swift "<voice name='Frank'>Hello</voice>"
  • '-f filename' switch now works correctly when given with other switches
  • Now provides feedback if the file given in '-f filename' switch cannot
   be opened.
  • 'swift --voices' now prints a much nicer table of all installed voices
   and their attributes.
  • 'swift -V' now shows engine version number.
  • If 'swift -o filename' fails to write the wave file for any reason, it
   no longer leaves the bad output file laying around on the file system.
  • An error is displayed if license file can't be written during
   'swift --register' or 'swift --reg-ports'.
  • Results of 'swift --params' have been checked and all options listed
   actually work.

3.0.3 - September 30, 2004 Linux only

New Features:
   * '-f' switch can be used to specify multiple input files, by making a
     call like this:
     swift -f file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt
   * Can use '--register' switch with '-n voice' or with '-d directory'.

Bug Fixes:
   * '-f filename' switch now works correctly when
   given with other switches.

3.0.2 - September 13, 2004

  • Initial Linux release.

3.0.0 - June 1, 2004

  • Initial Release, bunded with 3.0.0 voices


See also



Comments