You may have seen that some of my recent posts here on dev.to have included an embedded audio player at the top. This is a new liquid tag that I contributed over on the dev.to repo.
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The tag allows you to embed your converted audio from parler.io, a text to speech conversion service I have been building directly into your post here.
Parler is a side project I have been actively working on in my spare time. The goal is to convert written content into an audio format that can then be published, embedded, and shared onto other platforms. A future release will be aimed at doing the conversions automatically by watching your blog feed.
Now that you know what it is and how it can help you out, let's run through how you get parler audio into your own blog posts.
How to add parler audio to your own dev.to blog posts
- Get your RSS feed from here on dev.to or your own blog. Your dev.to feed can be found here:
https://dev.to/feed/<your-username>. - Enter the feed into parler.io
- Click convert on your blog post. This can take a few minutes to process.
- Once your blog post is converted into audio, grab the URL of the audio near the bottom of the page.
Once your post has been converted by Parler you can then embed it here on dev.to using the Liquid tag below.
{% parler https://www.parler.io/audio/73240183203/ab59b90c45cd1f2144291f1a1cfd69894f87aabf.e466ec75-50e8-47c9-b376-55122f2e3a08.mp3 %}
Save your post and share your awesome content in audio format as well as in written form.
It's worth noting that you can also embed your converted audio into other sites as well. This can be done by copying <iframe> code from your conversion screen and pasting it into your desired site.
What is coming next for parler.io?
Right now Parler is in alpha release while I gather feedback from users like yourselves. The intention is to extend it with more features like batch conversions, selectable voices, and an enhanced embed player in the MVP and beyond.
If you have any questions or feedback please feel free to drop me a comment below. There is also a mailing list on the parler.io landing page that you can subscribe to in order to stay up to date on new developments.
Top comments (13)
This.is.so.cool.
Just played around with it on this post:
This was pretty funny 😂
How do we teach this robot to pronounce dev.to as "DEV TOO"?
Also @kylegalbraith request for feature: speed up to 1.5x 2x etc.
It is possible to train the voices on the pronunciation of certain words, acronyms, etc. I have been thinking about what a good UI mechanism is to allow users to specify that. Very much open to ideas around this.
Noted, 1.5x, 2x, etc for the embedded player. Thank you for the great feedback and wonderful community @ben @jess .
I can help you with this as I have already done it.
Thank you for the offer Jochem. I will keep this in mind as I start looking into that functionality.
Would you be so kind as to answer my other question?
This is brilliant. The direct integration into DEV is an outstanding concept. I've already added a Parler tag in my latest post!
Some constructive feedback:
Great stuff!
Thank you for the great feedback! More voices are likely to come in the future and once the MVP is out you will be able to select a voice to use for automatic conversions moving forward. I have not thought about refreshing the audio after an edit has been made but it certainly could be something that gets implemented in the future.
Kyle, are these SAPI5 voices on Windows, some other type or are you using an external service/api? I would like more information. I've been working with speech synthesis sporadically for several years now and this parler thing is neat. :)
The voices in Parler are a combination of services rather than native machine SAPI voices.
Okay then I am curious which services they are and whether you want more.
Shoot me a DM on Twitter and let's chat.
I created something like this Audio Blogs
You can check the blogpost here for detailed explanation