Recording computerized voices to captivate

[snoman_stl]

Does anyone else use computerized voices to narrate the instructions for a captivate session? I would like to know what voices work well and the method that you use to add the voices to the captivate project. Thanks for any suggestions that you have.

[Captiv8r]

Hi snoman_stl and welcome to our community

By "computerized voices", are you referring to speech synthesis? Or do you simply mean narration as recorded by the computer while a human speaks?

As far as bringing external narration into Captivate, you will need to have it in either PCM Encoded .WAV format or .MP3 format.

Cheers... Rick

[snoman_stl]

The computerized voice I am referring to is speech synthesis. I call it text to speech. What I am looking for is when the text boxes display on the screen the recording of that text will play. This would allow me to update the text on the screen and have the computer regenerate the WAV file to be played with that screen.

We have multiple people that we want to create help demos and I would like the voice to be consistant across the demonstrations

[Captiv8r]

Hi again

I'm going to crawl wayyyy out here on this shaky little limb and make the following statement.

Assuming that you are using Captivate 3, you *MIGHT* be able to accomplish it. Captivate 3 offers a new way of recording audio. You may now record "System Audio". However, this will probably depend a great deal on your computer hardware. I have a Dell Inspiron 6400 and the option has always been disabled for me.

Cheers... Rick

[snoman_stl]

Do you know how to enable the system Audio in the Captivate software? I can use mic or Line in but the system audio is greyed out?

[Captiv8r]

Hi snoman_stl

I'm no authority on it, but I understand it will only be enabled if your particular audio hardware is capable of recording in this manner. The fact you are seeing it as disabled is probably an indication it won't work for you. This is the same for me.

Cheers... Rick

[snoman_stl]

Thanx Rick for your help.

Do you know if you can update captivate audio ouitside of captivate?

for example say I have slides 1 - 6 with audio files and I want to replace the audio on these slides with new wav files 1a - 6a. Is there any kind of API or access to the captivate project to replace these?

[CatBandit]

1) Update current audio by > select it with a right-click in the Library, then choose how to update it:
"Edit with ... (last default editor)", or
"Edit with ... (navigate to and open the EXE for your chosen audio editor)", or
"Edit with Adobe Captivate (built-in editor).

2) To import new files to replace current ones:
a) Go to the 1st slide with audio
b) Select "Slide > Properties"
c) Select the "Audio" tab
d) Click "Import"
..... Follow the prompts .....

Note #1, you can move from slide-to-slide to do this as a continuous process if you wish.
Note #2, there are multiple ways to accomplish anything in Captivate, so the above is not necessarily the only way.
.