Tag: youtube

How I use Anchor.fm and YouTube to turn my blog posts into TTS

NEW: You can listen to this blog post here

When I started my blog three weeks ago, one of the services that were presented to me was to turn my blog posts into podcasts with a service called anchor.fm, and I initially didn’t want to do it because I never liked my voice on video. One night, I looked into it further, and out of curiosity, I signed up for the service. After signing up and creating a podcast (which is the same name as this blog lol), I connected my site to the platform and I saw all of the posts (I had 13 posts at the time when I signed up) that I can turn into podcast episodes, and they also add posts when they get published so now I upload a text-to-speech version within the hour after a post goes live. Today is my 25th episode, so I thought I can give a tutorial of sorts on how I use anchor.fm and YouTube to bring TTS to my blog posts

Services I used

  • Anchor.fm, to turn a blog post into a podcast episode
  • Microsoft Video Editor, to make a simple video using the audio
  • YouTube account, to upload the video with all the necessary
  • The blog post in question, to post the YouTube embed

For this one, I’m going to use the 1st WordPress Adventures post I made last Sunday for reference

WARNING: This is a long tutorial, so strap in, y’all

1 — well, the post has to go live. I schedule my posts to go out daily at noon eastern, so the things I’m about to show you took place up to 30 to 45 minutes after posting.

2 — I log in to my anchor.fm app and automatically they find a new post to turn into an episode (you can sign up for anchor.fm and then follow instructions to connect your site to the platform).
3 — I click on “create episode” and the service will start generating the script.
4 — there is an option to either use automatic TTS voice translation or to record your own voice. Like I said, I hate how my voice sounds, so I clicked on automatically convert to audio.
5 — I run into two options… Remy and Cassidy. Remy is the female TTS voice and Cassidy is the male counterpart. I always pick Remy because I am female, after all.
6 — Then click save and continue.
7 — again, you’re presented with two options… record audio (with your own voice) with Anchor and record video on Riverside. I ignore it and click on save episode
8 — You can edit the title and description before publishing. I usually leave them alone except change HTTP to HTTPS because who uses HTTP these days
9 — This is what it will look like. This podcast is 3 minutes 33 seconds. I will be using that in the video portion of this tutorial
10 — I scrolled down to the player and click on the three dots to select “download audio file”
10 — I was taken to another page where I again click the three dots and click download to start the process. Now, I will use the audio for the next 6 steps in this tutorial
11 — I opened my native video-making service Microsoft Video Editor, which came with Windows 10. These steps will be about MVE, but you can also do this on your own native or downloaded video-making service
12 — I clicked on “new video project” and named it TMIPITW 016. I name all of them TMIPITW followed by a three-digit number. WordPress Adventures #1 was number 16 in the series
13 — I added the title card. Then I changed the background color from blue to black. In step 9, I revealed that the podcast is 3 minutes and 33 seconds. I set the duration to 214 seconds (which is one second more than the time allotted to fit the audio). (60*3)+34=214
14 — I went to custom audio and then added the audio file.
15 — Then I added the text — that is, the title of the blog and then I add “Blog link in description” because I will be uploading it to YouTube in a bit. Then I made sure to fill the status bar so that the title will appear throughout the video.
16 — After that, it’s time to finish the video. There are three options for video quality… 1080p, 720p, and 540p. 1080p was recommended to me, but I use 720p because less space on my portable hard drive. Then, we let it render
17 — Then it’s time to upload. I went to Youtube and clicked on the plus camera option and picked Upload Video
18 — I selected the video I just made and then the process starts
19 — For my first blog, I added the description manually. Now, with subsequent videos, all I did was to import the video details from the previous videos. As you can see, I imported everything except the title and I change the link in the description
20 — I always add a video, a subscribe button, and the playlist to the ending credits
21 — Let it check for copyright, which was a quick process. Sometimes it’ll be done as I put details on the videos
22 — I set the visibility to public and clicked publish. I also grabbed the link, which will be used to embed the video to the blog
23 — I opened the blog post on my editor and clicked the plus sign between blocks. Then I selected YouTube and added the link to embed it
24 — This is the finished product.

And then we profit. I’m kidding, but this is my super long tutorial on how I added a TTS version to my blog posts.

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My First Post (on WordPress) as The Most Inconsistent Person in the World

NEW: You can listen to this blog post here

Yep, you read that right (and judging by my bio), I am a very inconsistent person. Most people may or may not admit it, but I can admit to being an inconsistent person in real life. Why do I mean by that? Well, for starters, I don’t go through life normally. In fact, I am on a spectrum and remembering to do and say things have been really tough. Also, I am tone-deaf on a LOT of things. I don’t know if there is anyone else out there that feels the same way, but if there are… I got you.

In this blog, I will share my tips on focusing on even the most mundane of things using my favorite apps, as well as sharing my thoughts on my favorite things in the world. I love watching Eurovision (even as an American. I will get to that later), playing Pokemon and Bingo games (specifically Bingo Blitz and Bingo Pop), watching anti-MLM and general scams videos, YouTube Poops (think of them as pop culture on steroids), laughing at memes (not necessarily making them tho), watching the news just for news anchors, and being a lurker. By day tho, I am a freelance tutor. I mostly tutor math. In fact, I am planning to include a random math problem in nearly every post by posting a question at the beginning and then solving it at the end.

My blog is targeted to people over 18 who have trouble focusing on even the basic things in life, and those who also need an outlet to say what’s on their minds without people swarming them (within reason, of course). I actually started this on Google Blogspot, but I can tell you… let’s not do that. So I moved here to WordPress.

If you managed to find this blog, thank you for reading this. Follow me on Twitter @dezbee2008 or my backup @m_inconsistent for more updates

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