VLC Text-to-Speech Narrator Help

The VLC Text-to-Speech Narrator for SAPI 5

With the TTS Browser you can navigate in the usual way to pages on the web and use the narrator to read them. On Windows XP or 2000 the program operates with both the MS Agent characters (which use SAPI 4) and the SAPI 5 voices which are displayed separately in the TTS Narrator Dialog Window as shown below:

SAPI 5 voices which are installed are listed in the dropdown list on the left of the toolbar as well as in the Dialog Box itself. However, they can only be used if you are using the SAPI 5 Dialog Box as the Narrator - the MS Agent Narrators are pre-programmed to use SAPI 4 voices by Lernout & Hauspie. You can switch between the SAPI 5 Dialog Box and MS Agent characters with 2 buttons from the toolbar:

1. Reading text with the Narrator

Although the text in most pages can be identified, some web pages have too much program code for this (eg JavaScript), and also some pages are in embedded frames. So the easiest way to read text is to first mark and copy the text you want narrated and then select the Read from clipboard function to read it. You can use the toolbar button shown below to read from the clipboard:

**Reading text that has been copied to the clipboard**

When using one of the MS Agent characters as the Narrator, the text is printed in the speech bubble as it is read. In the SAPI 5 Dialog the text is first copied into the dialog text box and each word is then highlighted as it is spoken.