Text files coverted to audio files, i.e. let your Mac do your reading!

I thought I’d share the procedure I use for making my own audio books. Please note that they convert as regular sound files and not book-markable files, although I am certain that there are ways to do that as well.

Go to http://www.apple.com/applescript/macosx/text2audio.html and download both of the Applescripts.

Then get whatever text you want from Project Gutenberg (or anywhere else for that matter), if it’s in your web browser select all or a portion and paste it in to a blank TextEdit document. Then run the script called TextEdit Doc to Sound File.scpt.

You will be prompted for which voice you want, so it is wise to familiarize yourself in advance with the different voices, and the speed of their speech. (You find this under the Apple menu, System Preferences, and Speech.)

Some of the voices are better than others. I prefer Vicki, Fred, Bruce or Victoria. I don’t think Vicki is included in the script, but you can add it yourself.

I also recommend doing just a chapter or two at a time, as it will be easier to navigate.

You won’t hear anything, but a file will be generated and appear on your desktop in .aiff format. A dialog will pop-up when it is done, you can either click “OK” or play the file - it will then play in Quicktime player.

I like to take that file and open it in iTunes, (my setting is such that it is automatically copied into the library) where I click on the file so it is highlighted, and then under the Advanced menu choose “Convert Selection to AAC” - or MP3 - depending on your settings.

Since it is voice, you can also set the settings under preferences to render even smaller files if you choose a lower rate of kpbs.

Unless you have a very high setting for MP3 or AAC, you will get a much smaller file than the original .aiff.

The new file is the one I sync over to my iPod. I also make sure that I fill out as much info as possible, title, year, author, which voice I used etc. This just makes it easier to sort and manage my audio tracks.

Then I erase the original and imported into iTunes .aiff files, so as to be frugal with my HD space. A 55-page document that I converted most recently gave me a file that was 432MB in size, but after I converted it in iTunes, it was only 106MB (But note - I convert to AAC at 192kbps, 16 or 32 should be fine for just voice. It takes almost 3 hours to play the whole file, so again, it pays to play with speed and default voice in System preferences, and then choosing same voice for text to audio file.

Enjoy!