Luc Wastiaux

New High Quality Korean and Japanese voices

Language Tools now has high quality Korean and Japanese voices from Naver ! These are marked "Premium", there are 15 Korean voices (+ 2 child voices), and 3 Japanese voices. Some other generic voices are provided also.

You don't need to update Language Tools, this change was deployed on the server side. I will work on adding these voices into AwesomeTTS soon.

• Install Language Tools from 2021-01-28 15:25:31 +0000 UTC View Post

Have you backed up your Anki decks this month?

Backups are super important for any data that you invest a lot of time in. Do yourself a favor: from the Anki main screen, click File → Export, click Export..... save the colpkg file somewhere on your dropbox, or on an external drive. And do this every month!

API Keys: introducing AwesomeTTS Plus

In an attempt to simplify the key management in AwesomeTTS, I am introducing AwesomeTTS Plus, which is simply a way to enjoy all of the premium TTS services without typing a lot of API keys. (Note: this currently only covers Google, Azure and Naver, I am working on other services)

Patreon subscribers can obtain their API key here: https://cloud-language-too...

How do you configure your voices ?

I'm trying to determine how to best handle voice presets in Language Tools. Feel free to elaborate on your setup in the comments.

Language Tools: Watson Text-to-Speech and Translation

 A new service has been added to Language Tools: IBM Watson. It provides translation in 54 languages, and also 54 audio voices. Some of the higher quality voices are marked as Dnn (deep neural network).

Among audio languages supported are: English, German, Spanish (with various regions), French, Japanese, Italian.

You don't need to install any updates as this is a server-side change. The new voices should appear in the voice selection screen. 

Anki Language Tools v1.3: Automatic Conversions

Language Tools is the next generation of all-in-one Language Learning Anki addon, destined to be the successor of AwesomeTTS. You can read more about it and how to get started here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/anki-language-v0-45618481

This addon is provided exclusively to patreon fans!

This latest release adds audio (text to speech) support .

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Need assistance with Anki ?

Do you have a problem you're trying to solve with your flashcards ? Not necessarily just with AwesomeTTS. Any question you may have, any thing you don't understand, please message me and I'll try to help.

Anki Language Tools v0.8: Audio Support

Language Toolsis the next generation of all-in-one Language Learning Anki addon, destined to be the successor of AwesomeTTS. You can read more about it and how to get started here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/anki-language-v0-45618481

This addon is provided exclusively to patreon fans!

This latest release adds audio (text to speech) support .

2021-01-16 02:17:40 +0000 UTC View Post

Neural/WaveNet voices: which sound better?

Which voices sound better? 

Which language are you studying ?

AwesomeTTS v1.29 released: updated Google voices

• Updated list of Google voices, which now more clearly indicate language and gender.
• Added URL parameter for IBM Watson, to allow use of any API key.

Note: the IBM Watson API Key for patreon fans now has increased capacity, see the API keys post.

AwesomeTTS v1.28 released: support for IBM Watson

•  New service: IBM Watson
• Added Baidu service
• Fixed homescreen widget width
• Updated Azure voice list

Patreon fans have access to Watson, please refer to the latest API keys post (pinned)

The future of AwesomeTTS

I've been doing a lot of thinking about how AwesomeTTS should evolve in the future and wanted to share my thoughts.

But first, HUGE thanks to all of my fans. Cesar, RR, GD are the 3 most long standing fans, thank you !

AwesomeTTS - text to speech

AwesomeTTS has been pretty successful but I believe it needs an overhaul.

• It needs to be smarter. it should know which language my deck is in, which language I normally use, so that regu...
  2020-12-05 01:46:17 +0000 UTC View Post

AwesomeTTS v1.27 released

• Added deck picker widget to allow quickly pronouncing text based on your presets. Can be disabled in preferences.
• Added a way to output debug logging on the command line
• Fix on the fly sanitizer, which should allow substituting common characters such as [], ...

AwesomeTTS v1.26 release: bugfix with TTS tag

I have a fixed an issue where the TTS tag settings were not remembered correctly. Apologies for the bug.

AwesomeTTS 1.25 released

• Display error message if on-the-fly TTS audio couldn't be played.
• Run replacement logic (i.e. stripping, brackets) on on-the-fly TTS text.

Thanks to a couple of people who reported bugs !

AwesomeTTS 1.24 released

• On the fly TTS tag now uses the Anki syntax. You have to re-add the tag into your card templates.
•  Removed some playback settings (delay, etc) which are not applicable anymore
• Added Japanese Oddcast voices
• Azure voices have pitch support
• Reliability fix for FPT.AI vietnamese TTS.

important: you must re-add the AwesomeTTS tag if you use on-the-fly TTS.

Mandarin Cantonese Google Sheets Add-on: more accurate Pinyin

I've just released an update to the Mandarin Cantonese Google Sheets add-on. For those studying chinese, particularly online with a teacher, this is an invaluable tool to make vocabulary lists collaboratively.

https://medium.com/@lucw/converting-chinese-characters-to-pinyin-or-jyutping-on-google-sheets-eb12cca669cb

The update consists o...

AwesomeTTS 1.22 released

•  added Naver Clova TTS service
• added Naver Clova Premium Voice service (Korean)
• Fixed a crash with the card template screen on Anki 2.1.28

note: patreon fans have API key access to Naver Clova

Super simple Anki style for language flashcards

Creating Anki styles for your decks is intimidating but I want to share a simple one that I'm using, which looks better than the default Anki look.

This tutorial is designed for people who have followed my previous post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/38355502

On AnkiDroid, your cards will look like this:

2020-08-28 06:50:39 +0000 UTC View Post

AwesomeTTS v1.21 released

• fixed crash when adding sound to individual cards
• added speed setting for Azure
• fixed FPT.AI Vietnamese voice naming

New Anki Addon: Quick Field Focus

another very simple addon:  Quickly focus on a particular field in the card browser using a keyboard shortcut. 

 When trying to populate a particular field for many notes at once,  it's helpful to have a shortcut which jumps directly to a particular  field from within the browser.

Installation

Install from https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1199312228 2020-08-18 00:20:10 +0000 UTC View Post

New Anki Addon: Quick Clipboard Copy

I just released a new, very simple addon: automatically copy a particular field to the clipboard when selecting a note in the browser.

 When organizing my Anki flashcards, I frequently need to copy a  particular field from my notes to the clipboard, for example to look it  up in a dictionary. The normal way of selecting the note, then going to  the right field, selecting all and hitting Ctrl+C, is tedious. With this  add-on, as soon as you selec...

AwesomeTTS v1.20 released

 It contains the following fixes / features:

• Updated Azure voice list
• Added FPT.AI Vietnamese TTS
• Added speed option for Google Translate

Google Sheets Pinyin: Traditional Chinese now supported

This was a request by a fan, Cesar. You can now convert Traditional Chinese to Pinyin without any issue. Useful for those studying Traditional characters, or perhaps those in Taiwan.

More info about the addon:

https://medium.com/@lucw/converting-chinese-characters-to-pinyin-or-jyutping-on-google-sheets-eb12cca669cb

AwesomeTTS v1.18 released

It contains the following fixes:

• Azure: you can now select the region (east-US is the default). Authentication tokens are generated every 5mn, to fix a bug where if Anki has been running for a while, you would get "401: unauthorized voice".
• Google Cloud TTS: fix an issue where the voice dropdown doesn't show on Mac OS X Catalina
• Removed update checking code, which is obsolete as of Anki 2.1 

If anyone has features they'd like to see on AwesomeTTS...

What's going on with Google Sheets Mandarin Cantonese API ?

New users are unable to sign in, getting a message "not authorized". The short version is that google is being difficult, asking me to jump through hoops to enable the addon again. I've apparently hit some kind of limit for "unverified" addons.

If you know anyone who may benefit from using the addon, please ask them to install it manually: https://github.com/lucwastiaux/mandarin-cantonese-api#m...

AnkiReview: preview of upcoming Teacher Mode !

Creating Audio Flashcards in Mandarin or Cantonese

 This post explains how to create Audio Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese) Flashcards in Anki. Enhance your Chinese learning with amazingly natural Chinese voices !

First, backup your Anki collection

In Anki, click File -> Export. Save the file on your hard drive. It's important to do this regularly (once a month) if you invest a lot of time in your Anki flashcard collection. This allows you to recover your cards even if you make a mistake.

I'm now a maintainer for AwesomeTTS

If you use Anki to study languages, and you haven't heard of AwesomeTTS, you're in for a treat ! This addon allows you to add audio speech to your flashcards. This audio will then be played back by Anki automatically. This is particularly important for languages where pronunciation is tricky.

Check out the addon: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1436550454 . I recently made a couple of releases which fix v...