[vlc-devel] Need help developing text-to-speech-module in VLC - offering £5.000

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

   Hej,

On Thu, 7 Apr 2011 15:28:12 +0200, Sandra Derbring
<sandra.derbring at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, so it sounds to me like the best approach is to let the module be
> written against one free speech synthesis that has support for Swedish,
at
> least to begin with. I guess that you could later add support for
specific
> engines.

In principles, a new abstraction layer can be defined for speech engines
in VLC, if that is required. In any case, some work will be required for
each engine.

(...)
>> Balancing or remixing channels is feasible, except that VLC has no user
>> interface concept for this at the moment.
>>
>> However, sound effects and voices are on the same channels in the
>> original medium. So I meant it's difficult to remove the original
>> voices while keeping the original sound effects.

> I see what you mean here. I think the best option would be to filter the
> original sound - voices and sound effects - so it won't disturb during
> dialogue, but still, during parts of the movie where nobody speaks, you
> could still hear background noise, music and sound effects. During
> developing/evaluation stages, the users could provide feedback for
> different settings even if the developer has to actually carry them out.
> Thanks for all the tips and features you all have suggested in this
regard.

It's feasible, but not straightforward, as the VLC architecture was not
intended to render multiple audio tracks at the same time.

>> As long as OCR is not involved, it seems reasonable.

> That's great. Do you have an approximation of the time that needs to be
put
> into it? A month's programming? More/less?

Something like that, yes.

> The reason I ask on this list, is that we'd like to incorporate it
directly
> into VLC. My assumption was that it would be a easier to get the module
> accepted and used if it was developed by any of you guys. But maybe I am
> wrong? Would there be a difference if we let any regular programmer do
> this?

It takes more time for an external programmer as they won't know their way
around the VLC code base. But it can be done.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/