How to access Google text-to-speech beta features (March 1, 2021 release)

Question

On March 1, 2021, Google Text-to-speech released beta features, including support for the ssml tag with name or lang attributes.

I'm hoping to use these beta features, but I can't figure out what channel they were released to or how to access them. I haven't found any breadcrumbs in the documentation that would lead me to them.

I noticed that on the TTS product home page, the demo feature uses v1beta1, but doesn't support the tag. Screenshot of json from TTS demo stripping out the voice tag

That is, for the ssml:


Blah Blah English Text.  Blah Blah Korean Text.  Blah Blah English Text.

the demo shows the following json request body:

{
  "audioConfig": {
    "audioEncoding": "LINEAR16",
    "pitch": 0,
    "speakingRate": 1
  },
  "input": {
    "ssml": " Blah Blah English Text. Blah Blah Korean Text.  Blah Blah English Text. "
  },
  "voice": {
    "languageCode": "en-US",
    "name": "en-US-Wavenet-D"
  }
}

What we've tried In our own script using the google text-to-speech api to generate audio from a csv cue sheet, we've historically used the general release. The script still works when we change to v1beta1, but the tag still doesn't function. We're using the npm package symlinked to nodejs-text-to-speech master.

Our script uses: const textToSpeech = require('@google-cloud/text-to-speech'); and the general release const client = new textToSpeech.TextToSpeechClient();

We've been trying to access the March 1 beta features with const client = new textToSpeech.v1beta1.TextToSpeechClient();

user_15835642 · Answer

According to the release notes of Text-to-Speech API the tag is working as expected. I tried replicating the scenario on my end using Node.js client library and it is working as expected.

The document of SSML says the tag allows you to use more than one voice in a single SSML request. In my code I have used the default voice as English Male and for the other voice I have used the which is a female voice and I am getting two different voices in my output.mp3 file.

You can refer to the below Node.js code and output audio file.

tts1.js

// Imports the Google Cloud client library
const textToSpeech = require('@google-cloud/text-to-speech');
// Import other required libraries
const fs = require('fs');
const util = require('util');
// Creates a client
const client = new textToSpeech.v1beta1.TextToSpeechClient();
async function quickStart() {
 // The text to synthesize


 const ssml =  'And then she asked,  where were you yesterday  in her sweet and gentle voice.'

 // Construct the request
 const request = {
   input: {ssml: ssml},
   // Select the language and SSML voice gender (optional)
   voice: {languageCode: 'en-US', ssmlGender: 'NEUTRAL'},
   // select the type of audio encoding
   audioConfig: {audioEncoding: 'MP3'},
 };

 // Performs the text-to-speech request
 const [response] = await client.synthesizeSpeech(request);
 // Write the binary audio content to a local file
 const writeFile = util.promisify(fs.writeFile);
 await writeFile('output.mp3', response.audioContent, 'binary');
 console.log('Audio content written to file: output.mp3');
}
quickStart();

Output mp3 file : output1 (using v1beta1)

I have also tried without using the v1beta1 version in node.js and it is working fine.

tts2.js:

// Imports the Google Cloud client library
const textToSpeech = require('@google-cloud/text-to-speech');

// Import other required libraries
const fs = require('fs');
const util = require('util');
// Creates a client
const client = new textToSpeech.TextToSpeechClient();
async function quickStart() {
 // The text to synthesize


 const ssml =  'And then she asked,  where were you yesterday  in her sweet and gentle voice.'

 // Construct the request
 const request = {
   input: {ssml: ssml},
   // Select the language and SSML voice gender (optional)
   voice: {languageCode: 'en-US', ssmlGender: 'NEUTRAL'},
   // select the type of audio encoding
   audioConfig: {audioEncoding: 'MP3'},
 };

 // Performs the text-to-speech request
 const [response] = await client.synthesizeSpeech(request);
 // Write the binary audio content to a local file
 const writeFile = util.promisify(fs.writeFile);
 await writeFile('output.mp3', response.audioContent, 'binary');
 console.log('Audio content written to file: output.mp3');
}
quickStart();

Output mp3 file : output (without v1beta1 version)

Apart from this, I would like to inform you that I have also tried using the Python client library and it is also working as expected.

file1.py

from google.cloud import texttospeech

# Instantiates a client
client = texttospeech.TextToSpeechClient()

# Set the text input to be synthesized
synthesis_input = texttospeech.SynthesisInput(
  
 ssml=  'And then she asked,  where were you yesterday in her sweet and gentle voice.'
    )

# Build the voice request, select the language code ("en-US") and the ssml
# voice gender ("neutral")
voice = texttospeech.VoiceSelectionParams(
   language_code="en-US", ssml_gender=texttospeech.SsmlVoiceGender.NEUTRAL
)

# Select the type of audio file you want returned
audio_config = texttospeech.AudioConfig(
   audio_encoding=texttospeech.AudioEncoding.MP3
)

# Perform the text-to-speech request on the text input with the selected
# voice parameters and audio file type
response = client.synthesize_speech(
   input=synthesis_input, voice=voice, audio_config=audio_config
)

# The response's audio_content is binary.
with open("output.mp3", "wb") as out:
   # Write the response to the output file.
   out.write(response.audio_content)
   print('Audio content written to file "output.mp3"')

output file : output (using Python)

How to access Google text-to-speech beta features (March 1, 2021 release)

1 Answers