Dtyjlui

if I have longer texts to read I like to have them read to me with the following script from https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Sprachausgabe/#SVOX-pico2wave .

1  #!/bin/bash    

2  pico2wave -l=de-DE -w=/tmp/test.wav "$(cat ${1})"

3  avplay -f wav -loglevel 0 >/dev/null -x 100 -y 50  -vn -autoexit /tmp/test.wav

4  rm /tmp/test.wav

Save the script as svox.sh in /usr/local/bin and start it with

svox.sh TEXTFILE.txt

That works really well with English texts (with "pico2wave -l=en-GB [...]" in line 2 of course) but the audio-speed in German is a bit slow.

What I´ve tried so far is replacing line 3 with

avplay -f wav -loglevel 0 >/dev/null -x 100 -y 50  -vn -autoexit -filter:a "atempo=2.0" /tmp/test.wav 

yet that didn´t work. In order to find out why that is I tried typing the following command in the terminal:

avplay -f wav -x 100 -y 50  -vn -autoexit -filter:a "atempo=2.0" test.wav

I got the following error-message:

[...]

Failed to set value 'atempo=2.0' for option 'filter:a': Option not found

So it seems that either the syntax isn´t correct or the option isn´t supported.
Does anyone know of a way to speed up the audio output?

P.S.:

my system: Linux/Lubuntu 16.04.5 LTS, 64 bit

in the meantime I managed to solve this problem with a workaround. I use this script:

#!/bin/bash



pico2wave -l=de-DE -w=/tmp/test.wav "$(cat ${1})"

ffmpeg -i /tmp/test.wav -filter:a "atempo=1.2" -vn /tmp/test2.wav  # increase speed by a factor of 1.2

firejail --net=none avplay -f wav -loglevel 0 >/dev/null -x 100 -y 50  -vn -autoexit /tmp/test2.wav  # play sound in a sandbox

rm /tmp/test.wav

rm /tmp/test2.wav

If you are happy to use MPlayer rather than FFplay there is a relatively easy method to accomplish your goal. Use the following syntax:

mplayer -af scaletempo -speed 0.5 my_file.mp4

Remember to replace my_file.mp4 with the name of your actual media file. Now during playback you can use the following keys:

{   <---This key will dynamically slow the playback speed

}   <---This key will dynamically increase playback speed

Hopefully this will accomplish your goal.

References:

• 
  Top 10 Tricks and Tips for the svn MPlayer My own page with this particular MPlayer trick and a handful of others.