Editing a Text-To-Speech Alert

Here's an example of editing the spoken text of a text-to-speech alert. In this example we're going to edit the "default blind start alert" to only speak the blind values once, instead of repeating them.

1. In the main menu, tap Alerts:

2. In this example we want to edit the "default blind start alert", so tap "Level Start Alert".

(Notice that in the sub-heading of "Level Start Alert", it indicates that it is the "default blind start alert" and the "default break start alert".)

3. In the menu that pops up, tap Edit.

4. You can see in the image below that the the Level Start Alert first plays the "blues riff" audio clip, then speaks "Attention players!", then has some more text-to-speech lines.

An alert is made up of one or more audio clips and Text-to-speech lines that are played in sequence. Lines that begin with a double quote are text-to-speech lines.

Since we want to edit the line that speaks the blinds, tap the line shown below:

5. Then, tap Edit:

6. In the Edit TTS screen you can see all the text that is spoken for that text-to-speech line.

You'll notice some strange text encased in "{{" and "}}" characters. The strange looking text is script that allows the text that is spoke to use information from the current state of the tournament and current blind or break level. For example, the text "{{if:currentLevel.smallBlind}}" means that the text in that line will only be spoken if the current level has a small blind value, which means that it won't be spoken for break levels or levels that use a bring-in value instead of blinds.

For more information about scripting see the Scripting page.

We want to edit the spoken text, so tap at the end of the last line:

7. Now delete all the text starting with "I repeat, ...", until it looks like this:

8. You can edit other text-to-speech settings here too, like how loud the voice will be, how fast the text will be spoken, and pitch of the voice. You can also change the voice, even the the language of the voice. One of my favorites is "English (United Kingdom)".

Note, any changes you make to the text-to-speech settings are just for this line of text. That way you can have other lines of text that use different voice settings and even are spoke in different languages.

To hear what the current settings sound like, tap the play button.

If you want to update all the text-to-speech lines in all the alerts with the current text-to-speech settings, tap the gear button in the upper right, and tap "Update All Alerts With These Settings".

When you are done editing the spoken text and settings, tap "< Edit Alert" to return to the Edit Alert screen:

9. You can edit more of the text-to-speech lines if you want, and when you're done, tap "< Alerts" to return to the Alerts screen:

10. To hear how the alert sounds now, tap "Level Start Alert":

11. And then tap "Play". It will play the alert, but note, what it plays depends on the current state of the tournament, and the current level. So, if the current level is a break, it won't speak the blinds announcement text. You can go to the timer screen, and switch to a blind level, then come back to the Alerts screen and play the alert again to have it speak the blind values.