Can I use MS TTS Voices Commercially?

Can I use MS TTS Voices Commercially?

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https://forum.reallusion.com/Topic161679.aspx

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By ForumGuru - 11 Years Ago

Yeah, I know its a third party question but I figure someone here should know for sure. Smile

After researching for hours I think I can use the MS TTS voices I install in CrazyTalk commercially but I want to be sure.

Could someone please advise and/or point me to proper documentation.

From what I have read at MS I think I can but I want to be sure.

Thanks a million.

Regards.

By planetstardragon - 11 Years Ago

commercially the 3rd party tts developers are going to charge you more for a license, the 3rd party voices aren't royalty free. Technically you aren't supposed to even upload their voices to youtube without getting an extra license from them. It's been discussed before on the forum.
I've yet to hear of it being enforced though, but it's not to say it hasn't been or can't be.

The base microsoft voices are royalty free. make sure you check the agreements, terms and conditions and price lists if any on the voice of choice you use before going into production.

By ForumGuru - 11 Years Ago

So you are confirming that the MS voices can be used commercially... That's what I figured but the only documentation I could find was on the MS speech engine being redistributable...so from that I assumed from that the voices can be used in commercial vids and animations. I never did find any other actual ToS, EULA, or MS documentation that confirmed the MS Voices were fully royalty free other than that.

Yes, I have done extensive research of other third party voices and fully realize a commercial license is needed for commercial use which is quite expensive with most of the third party providers. Yes, I did research this forum before I posted and found a couple mentions on the commercial use of the MS voices.

All I care about on this post is the use of the MS voices being fully royalty free...

This is the best documentation I could find referencing "redistributable"...if you have anything better please link it here.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd266409%28v=office.14%29.aspx

I am very interested in CrazyTalk since xtranormal bit the dust.

Thanks much.

By planetstardragon - 11 Years Ago

wow, they did ? that stinks, xtranormal was a cute service! - welcome here, glad to have you! BigGrin

and yes on the voices, last I heard, the microsoft tts voices are royalty free - doesn't look like they make it clear though just in case they want to change their minds lol - these companies can be funny like that.

Q: How many Microsoft hardware engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None, they redifine darkness as an industry standard...

By wendyluvscatz - 11 Years Ago

OMG xtranormal are moving to mobile
that is the scariest think I have heard all year!!
all those mindless youtube animations creatable in reach of an android phone or iPad!!!

By mos6507 - 10 Years Ago

Technically Xtranormal's IP is now owned by a company called Nawmal and that has nothing to do with Tellagami. You can sign up for a mailing list there if you'd like to follow along with what they'll be doing.

By rampart - 10 Years Ago

I bought the RL voice pack and it is pretty good and price wasn't bad.

http://www.reallusion.com/creative/creative_NeoSpeech.aspx

The microsoft voices suck and sound like bots.

Always interesting to me... how viewers are so critical of voices and they are looking at animated graphics. Viewers can be down right mean about the voices too. I mean everything they are looking at is fantasy, yet they expect real human voices.

I think we can blame that on Disney and the movie industry for using celebrity identifiable voices in their animated productions. Wink

Now, when someone complains about synthesized voices I ask why not. The production is fantasy...why not the characters voices.

I suggest to get the best voices you can as possible, but you will never make 100% of your viewers happy. Human viewers think of it as some kind of thing they have exposed when they attack your synthesized voices. w00t

Your only real priority should be to keep your viewers interested enough to view your videos.

By ForumGuru - 10 Years Ago

@6507 --> Thanks for the info!

@ rampart --> Too bad you can't use the RL voice pack for public youtube videos or other similar public display.

The last word on this from Peter was here:

https://forum.reallusion.com/FindPost164023.aspx

Much of my communications with the professional voice companies was posted prior to that on the same thread:

https://forum.reallusion.com/Topic132009-281-7.aspx

In short...to display the voices publicly we need a license for the voice that can run near $1000.

Regards,

-don

By justaviking - 10 Years Ago

ForumGuru (4/28/2014)

@ rampart --> Too bad you can't use the RL voice pack for public youtube videos or other similar public display.

Wow, not even non-commercial public displays? So, no Pinhead projects? Man, that is really restrictive. Why buy it at all? I could think of easier ways to entertain myself for free.

By ForumGuru - 10 Years Ago

justaviking (4/28/2014)

ForumGuru (4/28/2014)

@ rampart --> Too bad you can't use the RL voice pack for public youtube videos or other similar public display.

Wow, not even non-commercial public displays? So, no Pinhead projects? Man, that is really restrictive. Why buy it at all? I could think of easier ways to entertain myself for free.

I hear you...not much reason to purchase if you are going to follow the license terms, unless you are doing "private" showings.

I received the info straight from the big shots at NeoSpeech. In-fact I want back and forth with NeoSpeech and RL for almost a week and the final word was nope, no public displays. I contacted every major voice provider via phone and/or email and they all said thing --> you need a commercial/audio distribution license for public display no matter if your end use is commercial or not.

Regards,

-don

By animagic - 10 Years Ago

That's why I use Acapela Box (www.acapela-box.com), which is an online pay-per-word TTS service.

They have none of these restrictions and even promoted my video "Shootout", which features their voices.

By ForumGuru - 10 Years Ago

Yeah, I have checked out Acapela Box... I use the professional voices that come with Captivate to create the soundtracks I need for CrazyTalk.

Cheers!

-don

By Tok39Larraby - 10 Years Ago

I purchased two sets of two voices from neo and another I can't think of now. I paid an average of $35 per voice from memory.

That enabled 'private viewings only'

If I wanted to upload content to Youtube (publishing UNLISTED only) it would have cost me an additional $70.00 per voice.

To go fully commercial. ... Pretty much unrestricted publish where you like - Around $1100+ per voice.

Considering I purchased 4 voices in total and would have liked another 4 so I had a pool of 8 voices to draw on ... I would have gone broke.

I'm ashamed to admit it but I feel rather foolish in not having checked the terms thoroughly before I purchased the voices (caveat emptor!!).

T'is a shame really - Whilst far from perfect they are a big improvement over the standard MS TTS voices. - Great for putting together a previz-ish version of content one would think.

..Without the ability to publish/display the output .... What's the point?

By colour - 10 Years Ago

"Tok39Larraby (5/6/2014)

This has been bounced-about quite a bit over the past couple of years.

Some Terms & Conditions can be construed as Unfair & have been adjudged as such. IMO, Neospeech fall into that bracket.

I've been using a what is now Neospeech TTS Voice for many years, used in iClone Productions published on various Websites & will continue to do-so.

By pjanecek - 7 Years Ago

Hello,

I was investigating what's new on the TTS field and commercial use of voices and found that Amazon Polly is now offering reasonable price for former Ivona voices and it can be used commercially.
Do you know if any other from the big players (Acapela, Nuance, ...) did some price redutcion as a reaction on Polly? If I have to decide whether to use Polly for a few bucks or probably higher quality Acapela voices (at least in some languages) but for hunders of dollars for one voice, the decicions is quite simple.

Petr

By animagic - 7 Years Ago

I haven't looked at Polly in depth, but it's attractive.

In the past I have used Acapela Box, which is an on-line service with Acapela voices, so you can pay as you go and don't have usage restrictions. I haven't looked if they have gone down in price.

Standalone voices are expensive and have usage restrictions. Nuance in particular is notorious for that, so I would avoid them.

By Snarp Farkle - 7 Years Ago

This is my observation of what I found about the TTS online sites and is just my opinion and is meant as an informative look into TTS online services.

I took a look at Avatar TTS, Acapela Box and Amazon Polly to see which one would be the cheapest to use with at least above par in voice quality for an average 5 minute scene, that would be one avatar speaking for 5 minutes.

I my opinion the results are obviously in favor of Amazon Polly which has par to above par voices and gives the user the option of using SSML tags to customize and control things such as pronunciation, volume, speech rate, etc., at a cost of around $0.02 for the five minute MP3. With their "Free Tier" you can essentially get one year of service for free. There is no limitation on software to use them on or any other usage costs. AWS is a little too techy for some people but I've used their services for a lot of years and if I can figure it out anyone can! Wink

PRICES

Reallusion's Avatar TTS is the next cheapest to use depending on the package you buy, (you do the math), you can change the pitch and speed of the voice but the voice quality is about the same as Acapela Box, a little more robotic than what I found with Amazon Polly. Avatar TTS has other features I haven't mentioned here but you can only use the MP3's in iClone, CrazyTalk, or CrazyTalk Animator. PRICES

Acapela Box with par to below par voices at an average cost of $40 for the five minute MP3 so I stopped there. PRICES

Hope this helps others looking for TTS information.

By animagic - 7 Years Ago

Acapela Box has options to have the same thing said in different ways (although there is no systematic way in which they occur) and there are also a number of tags to control speed and volume. Acapela Box has also a few voices with a bit more expression, and a library of utterances such as "Hey" or "Stop".

None of the voice services seem to have heard of exclamation marks...

The big plus of Polly is that you can change the pitch of individual words and thus render the expression more to your liking. However, I found the US English male voice disappointing, so my male characters will have to speak British English. The price is of course hard to beat and Amazon promises that they will keep improving.

For my last film I used real voices, but during the production of the animation I used TTS to get a feel of the dialog. If it didn't sound right it was easy to change rather than having to go back to voice actors early on.