Creating Your Own POI Voice Warnings Online

[Durotriges]

Hello :D

I've been busy messing about creating custom voice warnings for my POI categories and they work very well. For those of us without audio editing software it can all be done on-line.

The only thing I'm not totally happy with is that the final .ogg files aren't as loud as the standard TomTom warnings, nor as loud as the custom speed camera voice warnings available from this site.

Is there any way to increase the volume, or does that have to be done at the conversion stage with a proper audio program?

I used this program to create the sound files (Audrey - UK English seems to be the best for clarity and correct pronunciation):

http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

Then I used this site to do the on-line conversion from .wav to ogg files:

http://media-convert.com/convert/


I've made warnings for McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, BP and Texaco, in addition to the special voice warnings (Liz) for the speed cameras I downloaded from this site.

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If anyone else is thinking of having a go, these notes may be of some help if you, like me, are a beginner to this process (I have repeated some of the advice available in many other posts on this forum, but I've included it here for convenience to any beginnners):

Note: I think the .ogg files procedure only applies to TomTom Navigator 5 and later. The details I have written are from the point of view of running TomTom Navigator 5 on a pocket PC, but I'm sure nearly all the information is relevant to other devices.

Note: With my set-up I have disabled the Show POI option under Change Preferences and also under Enable/Disable POI under Change Preferences -- Manage POI. I think this is effectively the same option (correct me if I am wrong!). The reason for disabling these options is that it can take up too much processing power with your unit if you have too many POIs enabled, the result being a jerky visual display for the map tracking.

By simply using the Warn When Near POI setting in the Manage POI section, it will still warn you when you reach your chosen distance without taking up lots of processing power by constantly displaying the icons on your map by default.


Now to the sound file creation:

With the above-linked voice synthesis program I found that you might need to alter the spelling of the words to get it to pronounce the words correctly, plus you need to insert a comma to stop the program running all the words together. For example, for it to say 'Burger King restaurant ahead' I found that I got the best results with the following spelling alteration and comma:

'berrger king restaurant, ahead'

After it has made the file, click on the Download button, then when you get the link appear on a separate page, right-click and choose Save Target As and save it to your computer.

Next, go to the Media Convert site, use the Browse function to find your .wav voice file on your PC (allow the automatic detection to select it as a .wav file), then choose Ogg Vorbis (.ogg) in the Output Format drop-down list. Tick the Accept Terms button, then click on Convert.

Allow the site to convert your file, then a page will appear for you to select the quality. I selected 10 (the default is 7). Allow it to do its stuff and you will (if all goes well) get a page telling you the file conversion was successful. Click on the Download button, then select Save from the options to save the .ogg file to your computer. Use the buttons below to make another conversion or to convert another file, which will take you back to the beginning of the process.

With your new .ogg file, all you have to do is re-name it to match the name of the .ov2 and .bmp files in your device's map folder. For example, showing in your map folder for Great_Britain-Map, you might have copied and pasted the Burger King POI files, which will show as:

Burger_King (bitmap Image) - the icon that displays on your map screen.
Burger_King.ov2 (the actual POI database file for Burger King restaurants)

All you have to do is name your .ogg file to match the other two files, therefore giving you this (I copied and pasted to my SD card on my iPaq using the Explore funtion in ActiveSync):

Burger_King (bitmap Image)
Burger_King (.ogg file)
Burger_King.ov2

Once you have done this, start up TomTom and go into Change Preferences -- Manage POI -- Warn When Near, and remove the warning you may have already set (one of the standard TomTom alerts).

Next, re-assign the POI warning for Burger King and set the distance. It should have detected your new .ogg sound file automatically, so you know all is well if it doesn't ask you to assign a sound from the standard TomTom options. Leave the 'Warn only if POI is on route' option un-ticked. This will enable TomTom to still warn you even if you aren't navigating a route and just have your device on, showing the map as you drive.

That's it! Simply repeat the process for any additional voice warnings that you create. You can test your new voice warnings by going to Advanced Planning and setting up a short route that goes past a known POI (Burger King in this example!). Go to Route Demo and play the route back to make sure it works. The only thing to bear in mind is that if your POI is near a junction or roundabout the navigation commands will take precedence over your POI alerts, so you may only see the POI icon displaying on-screen. In this case, choose another relevant POI away from any junctions to test your new voice alert!

As I said before, the only thing I'm not totally happy with is the volume of the created files not being as loud as the standard TomTom alerts and custom speed camera voice files available from this site. I presume it's something you'd be able to sort out at the conversion stage if you had a proper audio program.

I hope this is of some use to any beginners. Please correct me if I have got anything above wrong!

Mike

:D

[Mullet]

deleted

[Durotriges]

Thanks for your reply Mullet. I had your previous posts in mind when I was writing my thread. I'll have a go with the Audacity programme in your previous link and re-do my files to raise the output level.

I couldn't see what sampling rate that online program used, so I chose Quality 10 to get the best sound quality. I'll go back through and re-do mine with a lower quality setting as you suggested. Currently my .ogg sound files are 23 - 25kb each, which didn't seem too bad to me at the time!


Mike

:D

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