ExcelToAmazonPolly

ExcelToAmazonPolly is a simple tool I made for faster prototyping in gamedev. It allows user to generate a pack of human-like speech files from an Excel spreadsheet with usage of Amazon Polly text to speech service. Keep your voice lines in one excel file, re-generate only the ones that changed! The code is pretty straight forward and easy to reproduce. Amazon Polly FAQ: https://aws.amazon.com/polly/faqs/

Why should I use it? - You may ask. First: Amazon Polly free quota is quite big and it's very fast to iterate all those guard_hello_03.ogg files with it. Download: https://github.com/StachePL/ExcelToAmazonPolly/releases/

Features

• Loads xls file with predefined columns structure
• Using Amazon Polly generates audio files and stores them in selected folder
• Reloading credentials on the fly (in case user typed something wrong in config file)

How to use it?

Initial Setup

• First of all you'll need an Amazon AWS account. You can get it here: https://aws.amazon.com/
• Then you'll need generated key and secret for the purpose of this app. It'll need only access to Amazon Polly. Instructions here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/managing-aws-access-keys.html
• Fill the ExcelToAmazonPolly.exe.config file with your credentials. Follow the pre-filled pattern for the region field.

Preparing the list of voice lines

Copy the _voicelist_example.xls file and fill it with all the voice lines you need. Mind there are some limits from the Amazon List of all available voices and languages: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/polly/latest/dg/voicelist.html For more advanced uses the SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language) reference : http://docs.aws.amazon.com/polly/latest/dg/ssml.html You can use the lexicons previously uploaded to your Amazon account, https://us-east-2.console.aws.amazon.com/polly/home/Lexicons (remember to use correct region). Separate needed lexicons with a comma, without space. Example: "LexiconOne,LexiconTwo" Used lexicons language must match used voice language, more details here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/polly/latest/dg/managing-lexicons.html

Actually launching the app

1. Load the xls file, after loading it should look something like this:
2. Select output folder
3. Check all the voice lines you wish to generate (if you didn't in the xls file)
4. Click Generate and enjoy!

Additional info

Known issues

• Please use *.xls files instead of *.xlsx as there are some problems with Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel package for Office 2016
• It may hang/crash when internet connection is lost (it's not bulletproof)

Plans

• Add lexicons support (DONE)
• Make it more forgiving to the user
• Clean the code
• Make it cooler

In case you enjoy the tool and would like to add something, feel free to send a pull requests, or create an issue with suggestions.