Home > SpeechPlayer > QuickStart

QuickStart

To help you get started fast with SpeechPlayer, follow the quickstart tutorials below.

Launching SpeechPlayer

  1. Launch SpeechPlayer by double-clicking on the SpeechPlayer desktop shortcut (if there is one) or choose the SpeechPlayer shortcut from the Windows Start menu.
  2. If you’re running SpeechPlayer under evaluation mode, you’ll be prompted with a license activation dialog.  To continue evaluating SpeechPlayer, press OK.  If you have an unlock key, paste the unlock key into the textbox and press OK; you will not be prompted for an unlock key anymore.
  3. Ensure that SpeechPlayer is ready to speak i.e. the tray icon should be green in color.

Let’s Get SpeechPlayer to Speak!

  1. Open a web page in your favorite web browser.
  2. In the browser, drag your mouse to highlight a portion of text that you want SpeechPlayer to read out aloud.
  3. Still in the browser, copy the text into the clipboard.  (Pressing Control+C should work for most cases; otherwise, right-click on the highlighted text and choose Copy from the context menu)
  4. If you’re using SpeechPlayer default options, SpeechPlayer should read the text out aloud automatically.  You should also be able to see the spoken text in a closed captions; if you don’t see any captions, you need to toggle it on.
  5. Now, you can try the above methods on any application that displays text and allows copy operation e.g. Notepad, Microsoft Word, Outlook, Windows Mail, etc.

Exporting Speech to Audio File and Taking It on the Go!

  1. In the mini player, open the menu by click on the strip on the extreme right.
  2. Choose Export As… item.
  3. In the Export As dialog that appears, select the folder where you want to save the audio file; then, enter the File name and choose the audio file type (WAV or MP3) in Save as type and choose Save.
  4. You may then transfer the audio file to your portable MP3 player.  If your MP3 player supports displaying lyrics, you can also view the speech transcript on your player!

Exporting Speech to iTunes and Taking It on the Go!

  1. In the mini player, click on the Export to iTunes button (near the extreme right).
  2. SpeechPlayer automatically creates an MP3 file and launches iTunes with the MP3 file automatically added to a pre-defined playlist.
  3. You may then transfer or sync the audio playlist to your iPod or iPhone using iTunes.

Temporarily Disabling SpeechPlayer Without Exiting

  1. Click the Standby button to put SpeechPlayer on standby mode.  Alternatively, right-click on the tray application icon and check the Standby menu item.  In standby mode, the tray icon is grayed out.  This procedure is useful when you want to doing a copy operation without having SpeechPlayer reciting the copied text.
  2. To switch to ready mode, click on the button again or uncheck the Standby menu item.

Exploring Other Features

There are lots more features which you want to explore such as:

  • skipping reading to next/previous sentence
  • enabling repeat
  • changing voice [learn how to get additional voices], rate of speech, volume, pitch
  • toggling closed caption; customizing caption appearance
  • keyboard shortcuts

The best way to familiarize yourself with these features is to play around with the intuitive menu items and mini player controls.  More guidance can be found in the help file that comes with the SpeechPlayer package.  You may also refer to the SpeechPlayer FAQ for more information.