New TTS voices Lulu and Hui

[leoninto]

Has to be done one paragraph at a time at the moment; tap on a word to select it and tap-and-hold on the |-> button twice to expand it first to a sentence and then to a paragraph, then tap on the audio button to play it.

Any plans to have a read all function or read selected (highlight text by tap-hold until the android text selector comes up)?

Or quick paragraph select -> speak?

*edit*

Or best, a "speak from here" option where you select a position and it simply reads forward from that point until eof or user stopped.

Thanks

 

[Dalianhua]

I've been using this alongside the sentence learning method and I'm amazed at the quality and flow of the audio.

Are there any plans to introduce a male voice as well? - it seems a bit of a missed opportunity to have two alternating female voices...

 

[mikelove]

Any plans to have a read all function or read selected (highlight text by tap-hold until the android text selector comes up)?

Or quick paragraph select -> speak?

*edit*

Or best, a "speak from here" option where you select a position and it simply reads forward from that point until eof or user stopped.

Thanks

Sorry I somehow failed to notice this earlier... anyway, yes, those are in the offing but we have to finish up some other changes to the reader first. (possibly in conjunction with a shift to start requiring Android 4.0)

I've been using this alongside the sentence learning method and I'm amazed at the quality and flow of the audio.

Are there any plans to introduce a male voice as well? - it seems a bit of a missed opportunity to have two alternating female voices...

Thanks! No current plans for that, we haven't yet found a male TTS voice for Chinese that we like.

 

[NomekSan]

Am I missing something?
No matter if I choose to prefer Hui or LuLu, I only get the LuLu voice comparing to the samples.
In the AddOns section it Say's "Chinese Text-to-Speech (Hui)". Is there another file I have to download for Lulu? Can't find one in the Addons section.

 

[mikelove]

We dropped Lulu, actually - it's missing a critical feature that we needed for our 3.x update. (specifically, support for the read-along function that @leoninto mentioned above) It'll still work for people who already purchased it, but we're not selling any new copies of it and will shortly be offering refunds to anybody who bought it that wants one.

 

[Xyde]

Hi Mike, thanks for answering my immersion request at Google Play 4 hours ago (btw I've just left a new note there...I should'ave posted it here but it only occurred me to join the forums after fixing my reply, oops)...

First of all, I apologize having to necro an old post but I want to know no matter what if the TTS can be used elsewhere on other apps.

I often use e-readers (mine is Moon+) and enjoy the read-out-loud feature a lot so it'd be nice if I can use Lulu and Hui on Moon Reader too...

It's like a dream coming true... Triple awesome for being:

1. convenient
2. smooth, high-quality
   
3. save money from buying new, inferior quality TTS from other services

 

[mikelove]

No, only usable in Pleco. The Android TTS engine doesn't support following along with what you're reading so it's not really practical for long passages in a reader. We are working to expand our own e-reader capabilities in a future release, though - what format of books are you generally reading with Moon+?

 

[Xyde]

No, only usable in Pleco. The Android TTS engine doesn't support following along with what you're reading so it's not really practical for long passages in a reader. We are working to expand our own e-reader capabilities in a future release, though - what format of books are you generally reading with Moon+?

I think that the commonest format that people use for e-readers are *.epub and *.pdf. I'm slightly worried about pdf documents' incompatibilities as loads of e-readers have this problem. (That was also why I paid for Moon + because they had both *.pdf and TTS support, plus plenty of customizations available!) I have a few *.mobi files although they're not in Chinese, but just to be safe I think that they're also one of the popular formats that people use out there.

 

[mikelove]

We're optimistic on being able to support both of those soon; ePub we're basically just waiting for Android 4.4 to become universal enough so that we can design around it - it uses Chromium as its embeddable web page viewer and so is a much better platform to build an ePub reader around (ePubs are basically just .zip archives full of HTML files), and the PDF situation is also improving thanks to Android L's new built-in PDF renderer (which we hope / expect to be much more reliable than other Android PDF decoding solutions).

 

[misctalk]

i just bought the basic bundle version for IOS & testing waters on TTS. I enjoy using the text reader & have the text read outloud. I do notice sometimes the voice is a little bit "off tune" especially when pronouncing "au" sound. Anyway I am interested in trying out other voices like "Hui" but am wondering whether there is an option to switch back to the original voice in case I prefer the original one. The demo voice is rather too short for me to judge properly. I mentioned this because in the Buy menu it mentioned about "replacing". So by replacing HUI voice, does that mean the original voice is deleted? Or do I still have the option of switching back & forth between the origianl voice & HUI. Thanks.

 

[mikelove]

You can still switch back and forth - we certainly don't delete the system TTS, you can even configure Pleco to cycle back and forth between our voices and the built-in one.

 

[misctalk]

I just bought the Hui Voice for IOS today. I seem to hear some "echo" sounds when using the document reader. Dont know how to switch back to the Original voice. Under Settings ->Audio ->Text to Speech, I have only 3 choices Playback speed, Sentence Voice (Mandarin), Enable English. I dont see the option to switch back to the original Voice before the Hui purchase. What did I miss?

 

[mikelove]

Make sure you're running the latest iOS update (3.1.4) - on that, you'd see an option for "Voice" under "Sentence Audio" that will let you pick "Apple Mandarin Mainland" (the one you were using before) or cycle between that + "Pleco Mandarin Female."

 

[misctalk]

Ok , updated to 3.1.4. Under Settings -> Sentence Audio - > Voice. Have the following choices: Cycle Voices, Apple Mandarin Mainland ( this is what I previously referred to as the Original Voice. Younger & a bit higher in pitch), Apple Mandarin Taiwan & Apple Cantonese. I use the Cycle Voices option & activate both Apple Mandarin Mainland & Taiwan. I checked under Add-ons, Hui is stated as installed. The "Hui" , I heard before does not sound like Apple Mandarin Taiwan either.

Now Question, where is "Hui" or "Pleco Mandarin Female", as you refer it?

 

[misctalk]

Another question: I originally purchased the $5 add-on Document Reader (Android) for my Nexus 7. After getting the IOS basic bundle for my Ipad 2, I activated the Android license on the Nexus 7. So far I have noticed that I can not have the document read outloud in the document reader, except for specific words pointed, unlike in IOS the whole document is continuously read outloud. Did I miss something?
Since I purchase an additional add-on (Hui Voice) in IOS, do I have to purchase it again for my android tablet? Or can that be also be freely activated as part of the Android license transfer?
Thanks.

 

[mikelove]

Go into the Add-ons screen / Updated - we updated the database for Hui in 3.1.4 and the old one isn't forward-compatible with the new app, so you need to update it before it'll work. (there should have been a startup alert about that)

And yes, you can indeed port that license over for Hui - had you purchased Hui at the time you transferred your license to Android? If not, go to pleco.com/orders.html and log in again and you should see an option to transfer it to Android and to link it with your previous Android license.

 

[misctalk]

Got it. Thanks a lot.

OK another problem comes out. Is there an easier way to show the TTS(Read Aloud) option in the menu upon opening the document reader? Currently what I do is to long press one word to activate the Pop-out definition & at the same the menu for copy, speaker, tts, flashcard, search, etc comes out at the top. Then that's when I am able to activate the TTS/Voice function. The problem is that as the Voice reads on, the pop-out definition bubbles keeps on popping out. In IOS there is an option to disable the pop-out definition during the reading. But I dont see it in Android. The constant popping is rather distracting & annoying. My current remedy is just to station the "bubble" at the bottom, but that means shorter page for the text. How do I turn off the "bubble"?

Also, is there a way to make the reduce the size of the "Bubble" if I have to dock it at the bottom?

Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian & Duogongneng Chengyu Cidian C-C - Are they in simplified or traditional format? I am more used to the traditional format.

 

[johnh113]

Dear Mike,
In flashcards, how do I turn on the little speaker symbol next to the example sentences? When I'm in flashcards there is no sentence speaker symbol, but if I go to the same work in the same dictionary (rather than viewing in flashcards), the sentence has a speaker button which works fine. It's just not visible in flashcards. Is there a setting that I'm missing?
John

 

[mikelove]

@misctalk - sorry, not sure why I never responded to this before. If you're still reading, you can toggle the bubble visibility on Android by long-pressing the megaphone / pause button.

Dictionaries you mention both work in either format, though they were originally in simplified so the traditional conversion may not be 100% accurate.

@johnh113 - No, example sentences in flashcards are still kind of a hacked-in feature so they don't include speaker buttons at the moment. You can tap on the first word in the sentence, long-tap the |-> button to select the whole sentence, and then press the audio button in order to hear the example audio, or just tap on the "go to dictionary" button at the top of the screen and view examples in there.

 

[johnh113]

@johnh113 - No, example sentences in flashcards are still kind of a hacked-in feature so they don't include speaker buttons at the moment. You can tap on the first word in the sentence, long-tap the |-> button to select the whole sentence, and then press the audio button in order to hear the example audio, or just tap on the "go to dictionary" button at the top of the screen and view examples in there.

Thanks Mike. I tap the first word in the sentence which selects the first word. Then I long-tap the |> button and it selects the next character. There is no difference in the response to either a long tap or a short tap. After tapping multiple times, I have the whole sentence selected. I hit the speaker button and it plays syllable by syllable, not the fluid TTS reading.

There is no "go to dictionary" button visible until after I select the first character of the head word, then hit the |> button to select the second character, and then I hit the ">" go to dictionary button. The audio plays fine from there, so that's what I do.

Playing the audio for example sentences while studying the flashcards is really, really great. I'm looking forward to when I'll be able to do it with a little speaker button on the sentence in the flashcard itself!

John