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I'm making a video and need a free Text to speech creator that I can use for an artistic/entertainment non-commercial video. I want a female voice narrating a story for the video. Any ideas where I can find TTS?

Hi, the best free one I've come across is the demo on http://www.naturalreaders.com

If you want the real sounding speech, you will either have to buy the pro version or record the output from the demo on the web page. Otherwise, If I remember correctly, the voices that come with the free software sound really robotic and nasty generic Microsoft TTS. I remember trying myself to download the package but was disappointed with the voices that were supplied. So I settled for just recording the sound output of my computer.

On the website demo you have a choice of a few different characters, male and female; you even have the choice of ethnicity which and the ability to change the speed of the speech, that's pretty cool.

If you want to hear the US female 'Heather' in action, I made this composition. Its at the start and end of the track: http://soundcloud.com/headphaze/headphaze-sonicanthology

Some of the voices there are pretty good, but the best I've heard is Bridget by neospeech. They have an online demo; select british english, then Bridget. Occasional glitches, but often sounds incredibly natural.

http://www.neospeech.com/

If you want truly free -- technically you probably don't have the right to use neospeech/AT&T;/etc demo sounds in commercial or maybe even non-com/pd works -- there is festival. Female voices have wonky harmonics, but some of the male voices are quite good. You have to compile it though, or find a binary:

http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/

AT&T; has natural voices; crystal is supposed to be the best. Just google it.

Cheers,
Tiam is Tiam

I am Tiam is Tiam. Check me out on Facebook, Soundcloud, and Last.fm
<-Freesound Pledgie

Make sure that when you use the online demo you have permission to use the demo on your production.
I know about this TTs:
Espeak - opensource, but robotic. I prefer it, because it speaks too fast and I use it all the time with my screenreader
http://espeak.sourceforge.net/download.html

2)
Microsoft speech platform.
You will need install a few things:
server:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27225
speech engine for your language
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27224
And something which can use this, I should recomend only NVDA screen reader
nvda-project.org
After downloading NVDA simply agree the license and click run temporary copy. Then click on the NVDA icon on the tray area preferences >synthesyzer> first combobox microsoft speech platform. After that click preferences>voice settings where you can adjust the voice settings.

3)
Microsoft sapi 4, Mike and Marry:
http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/sapi/msttsl.exe

4) MS sapi 4, Tru voice
http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/agent2/tv_enua.exe