Performers Go Web

configuration file

<avatars>
<avatar url="/media/Pbp9_q8I.swf" voice="ked"
name="huge penguin" file="Pbp9_q8I.swf"
thumbnail="/media/thumb/Pbp9_q8I.jpg">
</avatar>
<avatar url="/media/clock.swf" name="clock"
file="clock.swf" thumbnail="/media/thumb/clock.jpg">
</avatar>
</avatars>

Although the name of the root element does not actually matter, UpStage uses avatars, props and swamp, respectively, when generating the files. What matters is the name of the sub-elements: avatar, prop and backdrop. Each sub-element has four mandatory attributes plus one optional attribute, as described in Table 1.

Choose the http://localhost:8081/admin/edit/avatar/ link from the workshop and click the name of the relevant item to edit an existing avatar. The appropriate dialog (Figure 4) leaves you with two options, to change the item's name and voice.

Figure 4. The Edit dialog of this avatar doesn't tell you this penguin is so big that it takes up almost the entire screen.

Unfortunately, this dialog is of little help when it comes to estimating the size of the picture on stage. The UpStage client renders backdrops to fit the size of the browser window, while props and avatars appear about three times their original dimensions. The user manual (see Resources) contains a section with recommendations for sizes and formats for creating graphics.

When it comes to voice definitions, one no longer has to deal with XML—now it's Python. The file Upstage/upstage/config.py contains a section, actually a dictionary object, called VOICES that defines the commands used in text-to-speech synthesis (Listing 2). Having said this, UpStage speech generation does not depend on Festival exclusively. This is especially important for non-English speakers, because the Festival distribution as is limits itself to English.

If you want to add new voices, simply start a new line inside the curly braces following the VOICES keyword. Type the name of the new voice in single quote marks and add:

: ("| ", _fest),

Make sure you start the line with as many whitespaces as needed to place your opening single quote directly below the beginning of the other voice definitions. Python is picky about indentations, and incorrect indentations mean that UpStage stops working.

VOICES = {
          'kal': ("| timeout 15 text2wave -eval
'(voice_kal_diphone)' -otype raw",
                 _fest),
         [...]
         }

Following the pipe character (|), enter whatever command (pipeline) you like, provided it reads text from stdin and provides 16kHz raw PCM output on stdout. To test it, issue the following command:

echo "Say something in the relevant language" |
<command> | timeout 15 lame -S -x -m s -r -s 16
--resample 22.05 --preset phone - /tmp/test.mp3

If an MP3 player playing the resulting /tmp/test.mp3 file says what it is meant to say, insert your command into config.py. Because UpStage is particular about paths, make sure you're using absolute paths in this file.

The original config.py file contains more text-to-speech commands than probably will work with your installation. Because all of them appear in the voice drop-down menu when adding or editing an avatar, it is wise to comment them out using the # sign. Notice that with the original voice definitions, you have to comment out two or three lines per item. If you miss one, you receive an error message such as this:

Failed to load application: invalid syntax
(config.py, line 92)