IT-Flite

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IT-FLite    top.gif (983 bytes)

Flite (http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/flite/) was originally developed by Alan Black and Kevin Lenzo at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). For other languages, like italian, the original library cannot be used.
Some months after the release of the version 1.2 of the CMU FLite library, a module for italian voice in Festival and a program called IT-FLite was released.
IT-FLite is a portable C library dedicated to text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis, it is based on MBROLA synthesis engine and it is based on version 1.2 of the original CMU FLite library.

 

FEATURES

  • Supports Italian voices (IT_PC)

  • The system is based on LPC (Linear Predictive Coding)

  • The required databases are fully contained in static libraries: no external program is required

  • Based on MBROLA synthesis engine and it is based on version 1.2 of the original CMU FLite

  • Compatible with diphone databases for FLite 1.2

  • Italian lexicons provided

  • Compatible with Linux and Open Sound System (OSS).

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MT-FLite    top.gif (983 bytes) 

A new version called ML-FLite (Multilanguage FLite) (English and Italian voices) was developed by Filippo Battaglia, a researcher of Visilab Research Center of the University of Messina, has integrated the core of the CMU FLite library (version 1.3), the LPC database and the italian lexicon provided by ICST-CNR Institute, and the LPC databases for english voices that have been originally provided by Carnegie Mellon University.
The library is based on Flite version 1.3 (http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/flite/) originally developed by Alan Black and Kevin Lenzo at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). ML-FLite is a portable, fully optimized, library for text-to-speech synthesis, able to use both italian and english voices without differences.

 

FEATURES

  • Supports english voices (KAL, KAL16, AWBTime) and an italian voice (IT_PC)

  • The system is based on LPC (Linear Predictive Coding)

  • The required databases are fully contained in static libraries: no external program is required

  • Fully portable on any embedded platform

  • Fully optimized

  • Compatible with diphone databases for FLite 1.2 or FLite 1.3 (the library executes automatically the appropriate conversion routine)

  • English and Italian lexicons provided

  • Expandable with other languages

  • Compatible with Linux and Open Sound System (OSS)

  • Supported platforms

  • In this section you can download only the version for x86 cpu

  • For Sony Playstation Portable (PSP), a dedicated version of the library, hardware accelerated, is available in the Nanodesktop distribution, starting from version 0.5.

This project is mantained by Filippo Battaglia. If you have some questions about it, you can contact him at the mail address: filbattaglia@libero.it

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downloads

IT-FLite 0.75
it_flite-0.75.tar.gz
 patch-0.5_flite-1.2.tar.gz
 add_flite_mbrola-1.5.tar.gz
 add_flite_mp3_out_lame-1.3.tar.gz
README
 LICENSE
Flite (flite-1.2-release.tar.gz) is needed to generate the libflite.a library
and it is downloadable at http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/flite/download.html
(it requires Linux Ubuntu and OSS support in Linux kernel)

Windows Binary: it_flite_setup.exe

IT-FLite 0.8
it_flite-0.8.tar.gz
 patch-flite-1.2-release_lexfix.tar.gz
README
LICENSE
Flite (flite-1.2-release.tar.gz e flite_lexfix.tar.gz) is needed to generate the libflite.a library
and is downloadable at  http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/flite/packed/flite-1.2/
(it requires Linux Ubuntu and OSS support in Linux kernel)

License and terms of use
IT-flite is free software. You can redistribute it under the terms of GNU Lesser General License (LGPL).
Italian flite is subject to the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1 (the "License");
You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
 http://www.mozilla.org/

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download ML-flite

SUPPORTED PLATFORMS

In this section you can download only the version for x86 cpu.
For Sony Playstation Portable (PSP), a dedicated version of the library, hardware accelerated, is available
in the Nanodesktop distribution, starting from version 0.5.

Download ML-fLite version 1.1 for x86 platform
(it requires Linux Ubuntu and OSS support in Linux kernel)

License and terms of use
ML-flite is free software. You can redistribute it under the terms of GNU Lesser General License (LGPL).
See the file README.PDF for further details.

This project is mantained by Filippo Battaglia. If you have some questions about it, you can contact me at the mail address: filbattaglia@libero.it

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Part of this work has been sponsored by:

MPIRO: Multilingual Personalized Information Objects
European Project IST-1999-10982

 

TICCA: Technologies for Interactive Cognitive and Communicative Agents
A joint project between ITC-irst and CNR-ISTC

PF-STAR: Preparing Future multiSensorial inTeraction reseARch
European Project IST-2001-37599

Authors    top.gif (983 bytes)

Piero Cosi
 

 ISTC-SPFD CNR
Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione
Sezione di Padova "Fonetica e Dialettologia"
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
e-mail: cosi@pd.istc.cnr.it

Project Leader
Fabio Tesser
 		 ITC-IRST, Istituto Trentino di Cultura
Istituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica
e-mail: tesser@itc.it		  

with the collaboration of
   
Carlo Drioli
 		 ISTC-SPFD CNR
e-mail: drioli@pd.istc.cnr.it		  
Graziano Tisato
 		 ISTC-SPFD CNR
e-mail: tisato@pd.istc.cnr.it		  
Roberto Gretter ITC-IRST, Istituto Trentino di Cultura
Istituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica
e-mail: gretter@itc.it		  

References    top.gif (983 bytes)

  • "Festival Speaks Italian!", P.Cosi, F. Tesser, R. Gretter and C. Avesani, Proceedings Eurospeech 2001, Aalborg, Denmark, September 3-7, 2001, pp. 509-512. (pdf)

  • "FESTIVAL parla italiano!", P.Cosi, R.Gretter and F.Tesser, Atti XI Giornate di Studio del G.F.S. - Multimodalità e Multimeialità nella Comunicazione, Padova, Italy, November 29-30, December 1, 2000, UNIPRESS, Padova, 2001, pp. 235-242. (pdf)

  • "Recenti sviluppi di FESTIVAL per l'italiano, P.Cosi, R.Gretter and F.Tesser., Proceedings XII Giornate di Studio del G.F.S., Macerata, Italy, December 13-15, 2001, pp. 251-256. (pdf)

  • "On the Use of Cart-Tree for Prosodic Predictions in the Italian Festival TTS", P.Cosi, C. Avesani, F.Tesser, R.Gretter, F.Pianesi, in Voce, Canto, Parlato - Studi in onore di Franco Ferrero, E. Caldognetto Magno, P. Cosi, A. Zamboni editori, UNIPRESS, Padova, 2002, pp. 73-81. (pdf)

  • “Prosodic Data-Driven Modelling of Narrative Style in FESTIVAL TTS”, Tesser F., Cosi P., Drioli C., Tisato G., in CDRom Proceedings of 5th ISCA Speech Synthesis Workshop, 14th-16th June 2004, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh USA, (CDRom). (pdf)

  • “Modello prosodico “data-driven” di festival per l’italiano”,Tesser F., Cosi P., Mana N., Avesani C., Gretter R., Pianesi F., in Proceedings of XIV Giornate di Studio del G.F.S., Viterbo, Italy, December 4-6, 2003, Volume XXXI Collana degli Atti dell’Associazione Italiana di Acustica, Settembre 2004, pp.273-278.  (pdf)

  • “Emotional Festival-Mbrola TTS Synthesis”, Tesser F., Cosi P., Drioli C., Tisato G., in CD Proceedings INTERSPEECH 2005, Lisbon, Portugal, 2005, pp. 505-508.  (pdf)

  • “Modelli prosodici emotivi di festival in italiano”, Tesser F., Cosi P., Drioli C., Tisato G., in CD Rom Proceedings of AISV 2004, 1st Conference of Associazione Italiana di Scienze della Voce, Padova, Italy, December 2-4, 2004, EDK Editore s.r.l., Padova, 2005, pp. 799-806. (pdf)

  • “GMM modelling of voice quality for FESTIVAL/MBROLA emotive TTS synthesis”, Nicolao M., Drioli C., Cosi P., in Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2006, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, 17-21 September, 2006, pp. 1794-1797. (pdf)

  • “Sintesi Vocale Concatenativa per l’italiano Tramite Modello Sinusoidale”, Sommavilla G., Drioli C., Cosi P., in CD-Rom Proceedings of AISV 2005, 2nd Conference of Associazione Italiana di Scienze della Voce, Salerno, Italy, Novembre 30 - December 2, 2005, EDK Editore s.r.l., Padova, 2006, pp. 761-772. (pdf)

  • “SMS-FESTIVAL: un nuovo ambiente di lavoro per la sintesi vocale da testo scritto”, Sommavilla G., Cosi P., Drioli C., Paci G. , in CD-Rom Proceedings of AISV 2006, 3rd Conference of Associazione Italiana di Scienze della Voce, "Scienze Vocali e del Linguaggio Metodologie di Valutazione e Risorse Linguistiche", Pantè di Povo TRENTO, 29-30 Novembre - 1 Dicembre 2006, EDK Editore s.r.l., Padova, 2007, pp. 347-352. (pdf)

  • “SMS-FESTIVAL: a New TTS Framework”, in Manfredi C. (editor), Sommavilla G., Cosi P., Drioli C., Paci G.,Proceeding of MAVEBA 2007, 5th International Workshop on Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications, December 13 - 15, 2007, Firenze, Italy, pp. 89-92. (pdf).

  • “FESTIVAL E LUCIA: TTS (Text-To-Speech) e IVA (Intelligent Virtual Agent) al servizio della didattica dei disabili”, Cosi P., Magno Caldognetto E., Proceedings of 3rd Convegno Internazionale “Progresso e Innovazioni Tecnologiche nella riabilitazione dell'età evolutiva”, Napoli, 22 Giugno 2007, 2008, (to be printed). (pdf)

  • FESTIVAL: Alan W. Black (awb@cs.cmu.edu), Paul Taylor (Paul.Taylor@ed.ac.uk), Richard Caley, Rob Clark (robert@cstr.ed.ac.uk) CSTR - Centre for Speech Technology - University of Edinburgh. WWW page: http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/.

  • M.Macon, A.Cronk and J.Wouters and A.Kain, "OGIresLPC: Diphone synthesiser using residual-excited linear prediction", num. CSE-97-007, Department of Computer Science, Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology, Portland, OR, Sep, 1997, (macon@ece.ogi.edu)

  • T.Dutoit, H.Leich, "MBR-PSOLA : Text-To-Speech Synthesis based on an MBE Re-Synthesis of the Segments Database", Speech Communication, Elsevier Publisher, November 1993, vol. 13, n°3-4.

  • T. Dutoit, An Introduction to Text-To-Speech Synthesis¸ Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996, 326 pp.

  • FESTVOX: Alan W Black (awb@cs.cmu.edu), Kevin A. Lenzo (lenzo@cs.cmu.edu) Speech Group at Carnegie Mellon University. WWW page: http://www.festvox.org/.

  • MPIRO: Multilingual Personalized Information Objects. European Project IST-1999-10982 Version : 5. WWW page: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/mpiro/)