Inserting pauses into speech.

[pilbrob]

Hi all,

I'm using Voice Attack a great deal for flight simulation, excellent program.

Here's my question. Can I insert a pause into a single group of text?

e.g. I might have:

Pause 1.01 seconds
Say, 'Your main flow items are M C P and ee Fis.' or 'I'll work through my flow while you set the M C P and ee Fis.' or 'Pilot flying is responsible for setting M C P and ee FIs. .'  (and wait until it completes)
Pause 2.5 seconds
Say, 'Now my flow. . . Item one. . check that I R S switches are off' or 'First item on my list. . .ensure I R S switches are off' or 'My first item. . . I R S switches to off position.'  (and wait until it completes)

Each section has multiple commands (that are played randomly). I separate the sections with the standard pause command, but that won't work where I've got multiple options and am trying to insert appropriate pauses in each.

The best I've managed is putting multiple full stops after the sentences. It seems that used to work - the number of full stops correlated with pause time - but doesn't function as well in the current version? (or something else has changed on my computer).

Some other TTS engines allow pauses to be set in miliseconds.

e.g.

Say, 'Zero zero zero. . . One. \pau=1000\ One. Three \pau=3000\ Three.  Five \pau=5000\ Five. '

Where pau is the pause in milliseconds.

So, is there a way to insert something in a sentence to create a pause, in order to produce more human-like phrasing?

EDIT:

I did a bit of research, and found that a pause is easy to add with SSML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<speak version="1.0"
 xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis"
 xml:lang="en-US">

  We should turn the fuel lever on <break time="500ms" /> now.

</speak>

That works fine in voice attack - but then how can I have random commands from a list playing? (as you'd easily achieve in 'normal' voice attack with a semi colon)?

[Pfeil]

You can use random text even with SSML, but you'll want to use dynamic response sections for convenience and readability:

Code: [Select]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<speak version="1.0"
 xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis"
 xml:lang="en-US">

  [We should turn the fuel lever on <break time="500ms" /> now.;Fuel on<break time="500ms" />now.]

</speak>

[pilbrob]

Great. Adding the square brackets to the various speech options made it work perfectly.

I'm using this with Cereproc voices, and they seem to work well with SSML.