re: copyright free computer voice

[Pete Gates]

Hi,
I need to have a computer synthesised voice reading of a page of script for a comedy show. I can easily do it with the Apple Text to Speech but I'm unclear of the copyright situation with this. This is for international broadcast. Anyone been through this loop before?

Thanks,
Pete

[Frank Kruse]

AFAIK, those voices are all copyrighted. You'll need permission to use them in a commercial project.
Or you create your own. Record a voice -> Speakerphone -> Play with the GSM codecs if you need a really robotic one.

The Apple voices are so good now that you can simply record a real one and cut the words you need out of other context and re-assemble them to give them an unnatural feel.

Or try melodyne to get rid of the articulation.

Frank.

[Pete Gates]

Hi Frank,
Thanks. Yes, that has been considered - and may be the way we'll have to go. We want quite a lo-fi Stephen Hawking type voice rather than the newer/better ones, quite quick turnaround so don't have tons of time to play.

Cheers,
Pete

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by Pete Gates

Hi Frank,
Thanks. Yes, that has been considered - and may be the way we'll have to go. We want quite a lo-fi Stephen Hawking type voice rather than the newer/better ones, quite quick turnaround so don't have tons of time to play.

Cheers,
Pete

Speakerphone is perfect for that. Check out the "Larynx" preset in the robots section.

[Pete Gates]

I see there's even one called "professor hawks answers"!

Thanks,
Pete

[JR Fountain]

We used this web based one a couple months ago that didn't seem to have any copyright restrictions...

http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php

JR

[Henchman]

Wouldn't it be quite easy to send the spoken text through something like auto tune and have everything be at yen same pitch,a md add a bit if distortion?

[Craig F]

Di-Fi bundle

[Pete Gates]

Tried Lo-fi, autotuning, Speakerphone. In the end they didn't like bitrate reduction and autotuning as it took too much inflection (and humour) out of the voice. We ended up going completely silly with a ring modulator which was completely inaccurate but funny. Just goes to show... What it goes to show I'm not sure, maybe that doing things to the letter only gets you so far.

Thanks for the suggestions,
Pete