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Warp wrote:
I really think that good comedy requires good delivery, which means good intonation, rhythm, etc.
I have hard time believing a programmatic text-to-speech voice is going to be any good at that.
I'm felling like a complete idiot right now... But it's good, I'll tell you why;
The first time I read your comment, when you mentioned about rhythm and intonation, I undesrtood it completely wrong.
(not your fault, not at all, that's why I'm feeling like that...)
I now know how important it is in English to use a correct intonation, rhythm also, but most important intonation to deliver your message the way it's intended.
Well, I'm still kind of far from mastering all the nuances of the American English intonation, but once I get there I think I'll be able to "teach" Julie to help me on my commentaries.
So, the idea of a Tool Assisted Audio Commentary is not dead yet, but improving with every new thing I learn.
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Thank you for the tips, Evilagram.
@ Ilari; is it possible to do such a tool with a Lua script? It would be nice to have these functions right on the emulator.
My adventure on the world of learning English continues, and as you can see on my signature, I'm a useless parrot at the moment. :)
But I never thought that something so simple was the key to learn English; listening! No, it’s not so easy, but it is really effective.
Well, the text to speech may appear on a future commentary, but for now I think that a human voice is more appropriated.
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The run is really impressive and also entertaining for a run which aims for as fast as possible no matter what.
It made me smile a couple times, and of course it's fast, so my vote is Yes.
Dooty: text edited to remove possibly offensive material.
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Yeah, I mean Garth, but even with Wayne there are parts, I'm sorry if I'm wrong about those, that seems like you could've jumped instead of taking damage.
But about the Garth's damage I mentioned, you can avoid the barrel (or whatever it is)by not jumping as soon as you can on the third red platform.
It's a tiny bit faster than taking damage, but still.
edit: here's a screenshot of the spot, with the jump over;
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There are some damage taken which are kinda suspicious, I don't know but they don't look the right decision.
For instance, with the blond guy, fourth stage, isn't it faster to jump over that barrel?
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Thank you, EEssentia.
You're right, I was learning how to read because that was what I needed at that time;
read posts here at TASvideos, walkthroughs in English and to understand better the games I was playing.
Well, I know a bunch of English words and their meanings now, but it's not enough to speak English, sadly.
I don't want to make a fool of myself, doing something I'm pretty sure I'm not ready to do yet.
So I recorded a few audio clips here, to see how well it would be, but I almost died laughing. :)
My needs changed now, so I'm listening to real English all day long, practicing those tricky vowel sounds and how to connect them.
So, I must thank CoolKirby for offering to read the commentary for me, but this is one of those things that a TASer should do himself, I think.
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Thank you, arkiandruski.
I'll try to make just short samples, and Audacity seems to be the right tool for the job.
Balabolka can import audio clips and mix them with Julia's voice seamlessly, so I think it might work.
Let's hope for the best. :)
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Warp wrote:
by all means use a text-to-speech program.
I guess I took conclusions without thinking long enough about it, but wait a minute;
CoolKirby wrote:
I think it would be a little better to have a real person read the English translation.
Now that you mentioned it, I can't speak English yet, but I can read pretty well! Or at least I think. :)
I know it is kinda confusing - he can read but can't speak? How?
Well, it's hard to explain, I am learning English for about three years now, but I was only reading English, not listening or speaking with someone else.
So, even not being able to speak, I think I can do exactly what a text to speech program can; read English aloud.
It's still not even close to what a native speaker can achieve, as they can think in English, but still.
someone wrote:
What about your accent? Portuguese is a phonetic language, but English is not, what are you going to do about it?
I know it can be a problem for some people to understand the Brazilian accent, vowels specially. But I'll try to keep it at a minimum.
So, I was thinking about mixing my voice and Julie's voice on another commentary, something like an interview, but it will take some time.
Warp said something that I know alright; when you're shy it's even harder...
I guess I'm the shyest guy in the world, so I apologize in advance if it doesn't work too.
Well, I can't say for sure what the future of audio commentaries in TASes will be, but someday we may be able to TAS our own voices. :)
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I know what you mean, there's some XML tags in Balabolka to control rhythm and intonation, so I tried to make her sing, but well, it was a disaster. :)
You're right about her "uncanny valley" way of speak, and I'm doing my best to learn how to speak English myself.
I'm sorry to bring such a stupid idea to the thread, I'm really sorry, but at least I know how to NOT make an audio commentary. :)
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Okay, thank you, all of you, for the feedback!
Spikestuff wrote:
"dooshy is a Brazilian TOSSer."
Yeah, the TOSSer part needs a bit of tweaking, but she pronounces "Dooty" exactly the way I do!
It's a Brazilian nickname, so I say something like "dootchy", not "duty" as it should sound in English.
But, Balabolka is a feature rich program and learning to use all of its possibilities will take some time.
Also, I don't know English grammar that well, so, the program itself won't make miracles. :)
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Thanks for the suggestion, but a commentary in Portuguese? I don't know.
I think it will limit the viewers interested in listen to such commentary.
Of course, even in English it will depend on the creativity of the TASer.
But it's just an idea, I don't know how well it can be applied on a run yet, it may fail, who knows.
I'll make a sample tonight just to show you the potential of an audio commentary TAS.
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Good idea, but none of my friends speak English that well, sadly. :(
I know what people think about computer voices, but wait until you listen to "Julie". :)
And "TASing" the commentary seems to have some advantages too;
1) annoying tag questions? not anymore!
2) no silence between two important actions
3) it's cheaper than a good microphone. :)
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Okay, it's harder than I thought, but I have an idea and it may appear on a project I'm doing with r57shell;
(I just need to check if r57shell will agree to use it in our run)
The future of audio commentaries may be TASing the commentary itself!
Well, we don't have the skills to play games in real time as we have when TASing.
So, why do we need to speak English to have audio commentaries in our runs?
I got the idea when I was testing some text to speech programs, like Loquendo TTS Director.
This app lets you do some kind of "TASing" with a computer voice, but its voices are not that good.
But... VW Julie is a beautiful and natural computer voice, pretty clear and accurate.
So, I'm doing some tests with this idea and I'll post the results here soon.
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Hi, arkiandruski.
I love your Gunstar Heroes commentary. The way that you explain the things you did, it's great.
Well, one of my goals is making an audio commentary for one of my runs, a future or an old one.
But... my English is still really, really bad, so it may take some time for it to happen, but I'm working hard to improve it.
I'm listening to all of the commentaries on the site, paying attention to some of common TAS related words and practing "practicing" those pronunciations.
So, I'm all in favor of more audio commentaries on the site, it will even help the non native speakers in some way.
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Somehow I knew this one was coming next...
Well, looks like an unoptimized run and I'm pretty sure there are new tricks not used here, although I'm not an MK expert.
So, my vote is no, but my advice; try again.
I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.
