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Balabolka
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 9:06 am
by I am Baas
Balabolka is a Text-To-Speech (TTS) program. All computer voices installed on your system are available to Balabolka. The on-screen text can be saved as a WAV, MP3, OGG or WMA file. The program can read the clipboard content, view the text from DOC, RTF, PDF, ODT, FB2 and HTML files, customize font and background colour, control reading from the system tray or by the global hotkeys. Balabolka uses various versions of Microsoft Speech API (SAPI); it allows to alter a voice's parameters, including rate and pitch. The user can apply a special substitution list to improve the quality of the voice's articulation. This feature is useful when you want to change the spelling of words. The rules for the pronunciation correction use the syntax of VBScript.
Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7
Settings: Application Folder
Download
Portable Version
Note: The program creates an empty Hunspell folder in %APPDATA% (I think it's the default spell checker. Couldn't find a way to change this behaviour).
Re: Balabolka
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 12:37 pm
by Checker
That's a nice app
It's not only usefull to read texts, you also can generate .wav and .mp3 from whatever you would like to say.
My browser (Opera) starts with a nice lady voice (german Steffi) saying: "I'm now starting Opera for you" (in german of course
) done with Balabolka
Re: Balabolka
Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 8:00 am
by I am Baas
V1.33.0.469 released on 08.08.2010
+ Added the saving of text to MP3 tags. It's similar to saving of lyrics for songs.
For SAPI 5 only.
+ Small improvements.
* Resources for Chinese (Simplified), Czech, Italian, Korean and Polish languages
were updated.
Previous updates:
V1.32.0.468 - 03.08.2010
- Fixed small bugs.
* Resources for Bulgarian language were updated.
v1.32.0.467 - 02.08.2010
+ Added the tab "LRC" to the window "Settings" (for SAPI 5 only). LRC is a computer
file format that synchronizes text with an audio file.
* Resources for Bulgarian, Korean, Polish and Ukrainian languages were updated.
Re: Balabolka
Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 8:06 pm
by Andrew Lee
Re: Balabolka
Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 10:41 pm
by Ruby
Shouldn't the download link be:
Re: Balabolka
Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2010 12:01 am
by Checker
@ Ruby: Download link changed
@ Andrew: Thanks for adding Balabolka
Re: Balabolka
Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2010 12:54 pm
by webfork
Entry updated for (hopefully) greater readability.
Has anyone had any experience with the different voices and spell-checking modules? And, of course, are those portable?
Edit: Strongly disliking the default "Microsoft Sam", I tried adding more voices listed on the website but the program would not use them.
Re: Balabolka
Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2016 3:01 am
by smaragdus
The change log files (history.eng.txt & history.rus.txt) in the portable version 2.11.0.605 (balabolka_portable.zip) haven't been updated, the latest changes are for version 2.11.0.604. This doesn't happen for the first time (version 2.11.0.598 is another recent example). I gave the developer several days to respond or to fix it but since he didn't (it seems he doesn't care at all so I won't bother wasting my time contacting him any more) I am announcing it here.