Hi guys,<div><br></div><div>I've just spoken with Ivona who have confirmed their pricing and licensing conditions.</div><div><br></div><div>A single developer would have to purchase a single license at 3000EUR (valid for 1 year) to generate the voice prompt files. This license gives us all the rights to any voice prompts that the Desktop TTS software generates, so once an audio file is created, we then hold all the rights on that file.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Now, 3000EUR is a lot of money, and it would be cheaper to get a bunch of people on <a href="http://fiverr.com">fiverr.com</a> to do real high quality voice prompts.</div><div><br></div><div>Any thoughts?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Cal<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 4:17 PM, Cal Leeming [Simplicity Media Ltd] <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cal.leeming@simplicitymedialtd.co.uk" target="_blank">cal.leeming@simplicitymedialtd.co.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Yeah I asked them in the email to clarify what the license cost would be for unlimited re-distribution of TTS output.<div>
<br></div><div>Here's an idea, slightly off-topic from TTS, but well worth considering, assuming these files will be static usage only, i.e. you generate them once and leave it.</div>
<div><br></div><div>You could probably hire two German voices from Fiverr.com to do every one of those sentences/words for like 50 bucks... we get the majority of our voice talent from that site, providing they have a decent quality microphone, and you have some simple editing tools, then you could easily have a complete set within a day.</div>
<div><br></div><div>You'd basically provide the voice talent with a sheet to read from, and specify what tone, inflection and speed you want them to use.. repeating every word twice with a 1 second gap in between. Before you split, you'd throw the big file into an editing package, such as Ableton, and tinker around with normalization, dehiss, declick, mono, voice enhancement etc, until you hit the sweet spot. You can then automate the slicing using a simple Python script that splits the file on every 500ms of silence. Assuming the voice talent didn't skip a word, you can then take your word sheet, map this to your split files, and automatically rename them accordingly. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Using this approach saves you a lot of time/money avoiding unnecessary studio work.. using a static sheet allows you to not only have automation of the workflow, but also means the voice talent can give an accurate cost (because they usually base their costs on a per word basis).. i.e. 5 bucks for 200 words.</div>
<div><br></div><div>You could probably have an entire voice set of words/sentences of that size completed within a day, if you use this automation approach.</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div><br></div>
<div>Cal</div></font></span><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="h5">
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Julian Pawlowski <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:julian@pawlowski.me" target="_blank">julian@pawlowski.me</a>></span> wrote:<br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><div class="h5">
<div dir="ltr"><div>On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 2:56 PM, Cal Leeming [Simplicity Media Ltd] <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cal.leeming@simplicitymedialtd.co.uk" target="_blank">cal.leeming@simplicitymedialtd.co.uk</a>></span> wrote:</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote"><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_quote">
<div>I agree their pricing is confusing for non studio related usage, I've just sent them an email asking to clarify.</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Getting back to this, after registering for the Ivona development program I got access to their SaaS terms of use (<a href="https://secure.ivona.com/static/pdf/saas_en.pdf" target="_blank">https://secure.ivona.com/static/pdf/saas_en.pdf</a>).</div>
<div>It says:</div><div><br></div><div>"III. SCOPE AND TYPES OF “IVONA Speech Cloud” SERVICES</div><div>...</div><div>3. “IVONA Speech Cloud” Service is dedicated solely to entrepreneurs. Subject to the </div>
<div>provisions of these Regulations, the Service Receiver is entitled to use of “IVONA </div><div>Speech Cloud” Service for the purposes of the business activity run by Service </div><div>Receiver, except for business activity in the areas of Telephony System, in particular </div>
<div>interactive voice response (IVR) systems, Private Automatic Branch Exchange (PBX, IP </div><div>PABX or other) or any other telecommunication solution.</div><div>...</div><div>IV. FREE “IVONA Speech Cloud” SERVICE<br>
</div><div>...</div><div>3. The Text converted into the Speech generated under Free “IVONA Speech Cloud” </div><div>Service, will be preceded by advertising material of Ivona and/or other advertising </div><div>material in the form of sound, to what the Service Receiver agrees ordering Unpaid </div>
<div>“IVONA Speech Cloud” Service.</div><div>4. The Service Receiver shall not modify, in any way, Speech generated as part of Free </div><div>“IVONA Speech Cloud” Service.</div><div>5. The Service Receiver acknowledges that the objective of provision of Free “IVONA </div>
<div>Speech Cloud” Service by Ivona is primarily to enable the Service Receiver to </div><div>familiarize with the functionality, characteristics, uses and suitability of “IVONA Speech </div><div>Cloud” Service for the Service Receiver. Therefore, the Service Receiver agrees to use </div>
<div>Speech made available to it under Free “IVONA Speech Cloud” Service for the above </div><div>purposes only. It is prohibited to use Speech generated as part of Free “IVONA Speech </div><div>Cloud” Service for commercial purposes, i.e. to achieve profits or other material benefit </div>
<div>by the Service Receiver and/ or a third party. In particular, it is prohibited to make </div><div>Speech available to any third parties against payment, in any manner, as well as </div><div>reproduce, distribute, broadcast, publish Speech and on the Internet, radio, television or </div>
<div>through any other media.</div><div>"</div><div><br></div><div>That makes it impossible to use Ivona for our purposes as every user/company would needs to have a valid subscription and to generate it's own voice prompt files. Redistribution of pre-compiled voice files is not possible.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I fear as number III.3 makes it quite clear that usage for PBX purposes is critical Ivona is not an option to be used anymore for default voice prompt packages.</div><div><br></div><div>
<br></div><div>Br,</div><div>Julian</div><div><br></div></div><br></div></div>
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