Text to Speech: imprecise Break times

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mrx-1438 asked Mar 17, '22 mrx-1438 commented Mar 21, '22

Text to Speech: imprecise Break times

Asking for 20second of pause in text->speech gives only 5s and 10s for this code:
I would expect 20s!

Tested on website and over python API
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/cognitive-services/text-to-speech/#features

   <speak xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis" xmlns:mstts="http://www.w3.org/2001/mstts" xmlns:emo="http://www.w3.org/2009/10/emotionml" version="1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
     <voice name="en-US-SaraNeural">
       <mstts:express-as style="cheerful">
         <prosody pitch="0%" rate="1" volume="100">
    
         One. 
         <mstts:silence  type="Sentenceboundary"  value="20s"/>
         Two.
    
         One. 
         <break time="20s"/>
         Two.
    
         </prosody>
       </mstts:express-as>
     </voice>
   </speak>

azure-text-analytics

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mrx-1438 · Mar 17 at 02:14 PM

Even

One. <break time="5s"/> <break time="5s"/> <break time="5s"/> <break time="5s"/> Two.
creates 10,71sec break which makes no sense!

(One. Two. is 0.71sec, which is fine) but 10s/4 is 2.5s not 5s.

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Answer 1 · 2022-03-17T15:14:29.863Z

GiftA-MSFT answered Mar 17, '22

Hi, according to the documentation, the time value should be set less than 5,000 ms. Hope this helps.

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Answer 2 · 2022-03-18T09:18:14.36Z

mrx-1438 answered Mar 18, '22 mrx-1438 commented Mar 21, '22

As you can see in my 2nd comment, 4x5000ms != 20sec but 10,71sec, which makes it useless.

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GiftA-MSFT · Mar 19 at 04:32 AM

Thanks for your feedback. However, I wasn't able to reproduce the issue from your second comment. One. <break time="5s"/> <break time="5s"/> <break time="5s"/> <break time="5s"/> Two. precisely creates a total of 20s break as expected on my end.

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mrx-1438 GiftA-MSFT · Mar 21 at 09:28 AM

They seem to have changed something because now it works.

Hopefully it will stay this way.
Cheers!

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