text-to-speech

I recently did a feasbility study to see if synthesized voices could be used for a podcast. This sample script can be used to generate an mp3 speech file from a text transcript using Google Text-to-Speech

The processes were tested on MacOS, Big Sur, you'll likely need to modify for other systems.

You will need to install ffmpeg and afplay to follow these instructions.

STEP BY STEP

1) get a Google Cloud Account and install

https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text

pip3 install --upgrade google-cloud-speech

2) export variables

export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages
export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=<path to your json credentials file>

3) run the processing script to process your transcription

This will create a new directory that you'll need to use in STEP 5.

~/dev/textToSpeech % ./text2speech.py -f snippet.txt -v1 en-US-Wavenet-H -v2 en-US-Wavenet-J
Processing file: snippet.txt
Voice 1: en-US-Wavenet-H
Voice 2: en-US-Wavenet-J
Output Path:/Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935    <= you'll need this in the next 2 steps
Audio content written to file /Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/1.mp3
Audio content written to file /Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/2.mp3
Audio content written to file /Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/3.mp3
Audio content written to file /Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/4.mp3
Audio content written to file /Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/5.mp3
Audio content written to file /Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/6.mp3
Audio content written to file /Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/7.mp3
Audio content written to file /Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/8.mp3

4) cd into the newly created directory

% cd /Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935

5) create a file to be used by ffmpeg to concatenate the mp3 files

NOTE: The format of "filelist" is important

% ls -ltr *.mp3|awk '{print "file '\''<output path from step 3>/"$NF"'\''"}' > filelist

example =>
~/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935 % ls -ltr *.mp3|awk '{print "file '\''/Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/"$NF"'\''"}' > filelist
~/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935 % cat filelist
file '/Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/1.mp3'
file '/Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/2.mp3'
file '/Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/3.mp3'
file '/Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/4.mp3'
file '/Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/5.mp3'
file '/Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/6.mp3'
file '/Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/7.mp3'
file '/Users/markburnham/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935/8.mp3'

6) use ffmpeg to process the filelist you created - this will concatenate the separate files into a single mp3

~/dev/textToSpeech/1615648935 % ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i filelist -c copy snippet.mp3
ffmpeg version 4.3.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2020 the FFmpeg developers
  built with Apple clang version 12.0.0 (clang-1200.0.32.28)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/4.3.1_7 --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-version3 --enable-avresample --cc=clang --host-cflags= --host-ldflags= --enable-ffplay --enable-gnutls --enable-gpl --enable-libaom --enable-libbluray --enable-libdav1d --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopus --enable-librav1e --enable-librubberband --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsrt --enable-libtesseract --enable-libtheora --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libxvid --enable-lzma --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-frei0r --enable-libass --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-librtmp --enable-libspeex --enable-libsoxr --enable-videotoolbox --enable-libzmq --enable-libzimg --disable-libjack --disable-indev=jack
  libavutil      56. 51.100 / 56. 51.100
  libavcodec     58. 91.100 / 58. 91.100
  libavformat    58. 45.100 / 58. 45.100
  libavdevice    58. 10.100 / 58. 10.100
  libavfilter     7. 85.100 /  7. 85.100
  libavresample   4.  0.  0 /  4.  0.  0
  libswscale      5.  7.100 /  5.  7.100
  libswresample   3.  7.100 /  3.  7.100
  libpostproc    55.  7.100 / 55.  7.100
[mp3 @ 0x7fa635809000] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
Input #0, concat, from 'filelist':
  Duration: N/A, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 32 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 24000 Hz, mono, fltp, 32 kb/s
Output #0, mp3, to 'snippet.mp3':
  Metadata:
    TSSE            : Lavf58.45.100
    Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 24000 Hz, mono, fltp, 32 kb/s
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (copy)
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
[mp3 @ 0x7fa637017200] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
[mp3 @ 0x7fa63600b000] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
[mp3 @ 0x7fa637810200] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
[mp3 @ 0x7fa63601c600] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
[mp3 @ 0x7fa637017200] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
[mp3 @ 0x7fa637010400] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
[mp3 @ 0x7fa637810200] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
size=     113kB time=00:00:28.89 bitrate=  32.1kbits/s speed=1.13e+03x    
video:0kB audio:113kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: 0.204876%

7) play your new mp3!

% afplay snippet.mp3