This Node.js script generates audio files from text files using the Google Cloud Text-to-Speech API. The sample configuration file (config.sample.js) is set up to read legal transcripts, although with some knowledge of regular expressions it can be adapted to a number of other use cases with little effort.

The script processes input text via configurable regular expressions to segment it into chunks and then decide which voice is used to speak each chunk. It also keeps track of monthly API usage (see googleVoiceData.js to set up the limits) and prevents requests exceeding a set quota.

The speech synthesis engine used is abstracted, so that the same script can be used with multiple engines with minimal code changes.

Getting Started

Clone this repository

git clone https://github.com/theborgh/speak-transcript.git

Install dependencies

cd google-voice
npm install

You must have a Google Cloud account and a project with the Text-to-Speech API enabled. See Google Cloud Text-to-Speech API Quickstart for more information.

Place the text you want to convert in the input.txt file. The script will process all text it finds here.

Rename config.sample.js to config.js and fill in the required information according to how you want the input text to be segmented and whose voice you want to speak each chunk.

You can now run the script:

npm start

it will generate a single audio file named output.mp3 (there is a sample output in output.sample.mp3).

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.