Talking Head 🗣️

AI-generated podcast-style audio from turn-based conversations in WordPress.

talking-head.mp4

No point watching without audio

Description

Talking Head lets you write multi-speaker conversations in the WordPress block editor, then generate podcast-quality audio using AI text-to-speech. Each speaker ("head") gets their own voice, and the plugin stitches the segments together into a single audio file with configurable silence gaps.

Features

• Episode editor — Gutenberg blocks for writing turn-based conversations
• Speaker profiles — Custom post type for managing voices and personas
• OpenAI TTS — Generate speech using OpenAI's text-to-speech API (alloy, echo, fable, onyx, nova, shimmer)
• Azure OpenAI TTS — Alternative provider using Azure-hosted OpenAI deployments
• Background processing — Audio generation runs via Action Scheduler, with progress tracking
• Audio stitching — FFmpeg-based concatenation with silence gaps and loudness normalization, or pure PHP fallback
• Player block — Embed episode playback in any post or page, with optional transcript
• Provider interface — Extensible architecture for adding more TTS providers

Requirements

• WordPress 6.8+
• PHP 8.3+
• FFmpeg installed on the server (optional — PHP fallback available)

Installation

1. Download the latest talking-head.zip.
2. In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin and upload the zip.
3. Activate the plugin.

The plugin updates itself automatically via GitHub releases using plugin-update-checker.

Configuration

Go to Settings > Talking Head and configure:

Setting	Description
OpenAI API Key	Your OpenAI API key for TTS
TTS Model	tts-1 (standard), tts-1-hd (high quality), or gpt-4o-mini-tts (supports instructions)
Default Voice	Default voice for new speaker profiles
FFmpeg Path	Absolute path to the FFmpeg binary
Output Format	MP3 or AAC
Output Bitrate	128k / 192k / 256k / 320k
Silence Gap	Milliseconds of silence between turns
Max Segments	Maximum turns per episode
Max Characters	Maximum text length per turn
Rate Limit	API requests per minute

Settings can also be set via constants in wp-config.php (highest priority) or environment variables:

define( 'TALKING_HEAD_OPENAI_API_KEY', 'sk-...' );
define( 'TALKING_HEAD_FFMPEG_PATH', '/usr/bin/ffmpeg' );

Usage

1. Create Speaker Profiles

Go to Talking Head > Heads and create speaker profiles. Each head has:

• A name
• A voice ID (e.g., nova, onyx)
• A provider (openai or azure_openai)
• Speed (0.25–4.0, default 1.0)
• Optional speaking style/instructions (used with gpt-4o-mini-tts)
• Optional avatar (featured image)

2. Write an Episode

Go to Talking Head > Add New Episode. The editor loads with an Episode container block and one Turn block. For each turn:

• Select a speaker from the dropdown
• Write the dialogue text

Add more turns with the block appender.

3. Generate Audio

In the episode sidebar panel, click Generate Audio. The plugin:

1. Validates the manuscript (speakers assigned, text within limits)
2. Creates a background job via Action Scheduler
3. Generates TTS audio for each turn via OpenAI
4. Stitches segments with FFmpeg into a single MP3
5. Stores the result in wp-content/uploads/talking-head/

Progress is shown in the sidebar via polling.

4. Embed the Player

Use the Talking Head Player block in any post or page. Set the Episode ID and optionally enable transcript display. The block renders a native <audio> element with a download link.

Development

See DEVELOPER.md for build commands, REST API, architecture, and workflow details.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.