TTSBatchConverter » Use cases » Audio versions of course materials
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The situation
A course has a lot of text: lesson notes, reading material, revision summaries, a study guide. Making an audio version usually means either recording it - hours of studio time per module - or uploading it to a text-to-speech service, which raises its own questions when the material is licensed or the students' privacy matters.
What the course needs is a plain folder of MP3s, one per lesson, that can be handed out at the same time as the PDFs.
What you do
- Export or copy the lesson text into one text file per lesson, in a folder (a sub-folder per module works, too).
- Choose the voice and the pace. For study material, a slightly slower rate is usually easier to follow - it is a setting, applied to the whole batch.
- Convert to MP3. The folder structure comes across, so the audio edition mirrors the course.
Nothing leaves the computer: the lesson text is not uploaded to a speech service, which is what makes this workable for licensed course material and for institutions that cannot send student-facing content to a third party. Re-running the job after an edit converts the changed file and leaves the rest in place.
What it will not do
- It does not read PDFs or slide decks. Text files first (TXT, or CSV/TSV with a text column). Turning a PDF into text is a step before this one.
- It does not narrate like a presenter. It reads the text with a synthetic voice - no emphasis tuned to meaning, no subject-matter delivery. Short sentences and written-out numbers read much better than dense academic prose.
- It does not edit or master the audio, and it does not add chapters, music or an intro.
- Windows only (Windows 10 and 11) - worth knowing if the course is produced on a Mac.
Related
The general job: convert text files to speech. A library rather than a course: listen to a folder of documents. Producing it regularly: on a schedule. Adding a different voice: add voices.