- How'd you like to take your blogs
and convert them to audio automatically?
I'm going to show you how, it's coming up next.
(sci-fi sounds)
One of the things that Amazon has been working on
is the AI component.
And in this case, text to speech.
So they have been working on something called Amazon Polly
for at least a couple of years now.
And they recently came out with an announcement
saying that it is now available for all to use.
And you can do lots of things
with this on the development end,
but for blogs they've created
and they've teamed up with WP engine
and they've created a word press plug-in called Amazon Polly
that will convert your blog posts into text to speech.
So, The first question you're probably going to ask
is why would I want to do this?
And the easy answer is that it gives you another avenue
to take your blog post.
You know, we've always talked about
repurposing your content.
Amazon, with this polly plug-in
you'll be able to do that on the fly and directly.
And this plug-in that I'm going to be showing you.
You'll enable you to actually create
a whole podcast with Amazon Polly.
So lets dig in, lets get started.
Roll up our sleeves and see how this all works.
One of the things you're going to need is
actually to have an AWS account.
You'll need to have
an account with the amazon web services
and to do that, is very easy.
You sign in with your amazon account.
And once you sign in with your amazon account.
You'll be taken to the console area.
So that's what we are going to do now.
I'm going to sign in.
Once you are signed in, what you want to do is
go over to where your name is
and click on my security credentials.
Now if this is your first time here,
you're not going to have any security credentials
so you want to continue to security credentials
and what you want to do is you want to go into access keys
access key ID and secret access key.
You want to click that open
and you want to create a new access key
if you don't have one already created.
Your secret access key and your access key ID
those are the two pieces you're going to need.
Alright, once you have those we are going to go
over to the plug-in now and install that.
So I've already got it here.
It is available in the directory.
Its got 100 plus active installs, it is a new plug-in
as they have just launched this a couple of days ago.
So you want to do what we always do with plug-ins,
we want to install and then activate.
Once you've done that we'll switch over
to the settings of the plug-in
this is where you want to put in
your AWS access key, your AWS secret key.
Now they are going to ask you for
the sample rate for this audio.
And you could do 22050, or you could do 16,000
or 8,000. I've got it at 22050, but you can
manually override this by going into the blog post
and there is a little settings there.
I'm going to show you how to do that next.
This is where you are going to set
your voice name and again this is
manually overridden in each particular blog post.
So you can do that and you want to put
where you want the player position.
I've got it before the post.
And if you want to have Amazon Polly enabled or disabled.
So I have it enabled for each new post I create.
Its automatically going to be added.
Then you have an option to whether
or not you want to have an auto play.
I have that turned off because I think
that would be kind of annoying
to have a voice, say you're not in a position
to listen to anything I don't want that.
It's kind of like having a video auto played.
Now here is a neat thing that you can actually have
you can store your amazon audio on Amazon S3.
Again that's the amazon web services.
If you're familiar with that, you can connect your audio
files and have them stored and streamed from there.
So that's kind of neat so it doesn't
take up processing power on your web server.
For more information, I'll leave this link down
in the description below for you to go take a look.
Now here is where we get into some interesting, fun stuff.
It has Amazon Pollycast.
So you can actually create a podcast
from the polly audio files that are created.
Now the funny thing here is that it is going to sound
like a robotic voice.
Now, I'm sure they're going to
be improving on that technology.
So if you want to go check that out you can.
The fact that they're going to have this is great,
but I don't see how anyone would really
enjoy listening to a robotic voice.
So I'm not going to be filling that in.
You're welcome to go test it out and fill it in.
And connect your podcast, your pollycast to Itunes.
Once you're all set with all that
you click on save changes.
Okay, so I've got polly installed, and now I'm
going to go down to my blog post.
And right here is the section for the manual settings
for each blog post, enable Amazon Polly.
You can say yes or no.
You can set the sample rate.
I've got it set at `16,000.
And you can change the voice name.
And there are quite a few and there are a whole bunch
of different languages as well.
I'm going to pick, oh we also have Brazilian
and British English.
Lets do British English, Brian.
And the thing that needs to be mentioned,
is that this service is not free.
The plug-in is free but the service
you're using your AWS, your Amazon web services,
you actually have to pay for.
And... if you have a long blog post,
it's going to be more expensive than
if you have a short blog post.
But expensive means pennies.
If I click on how much will this cost to convert,
it's going to tell me point zero one six cents.
Which is a very minuscule amount
for this conversion to happen.
But it does cost.
So, that is something that you need to be aware of.
So now that we have that,
we're going to go and click update.
Now if you didn't do the bulk update
and you do this manually, you'll need to re save
your blog post because if you just made those changes
and then clicked refresh on your blog post,
it's actually not going to register the changes.
So make sure you click update
after you've set up Amazon Polly.
So lets click on view post.
And this is what its going to look like on your blog post.
It's going to have a little audio bar going across here.
And there is a play button here, and then there is
the amount of time elapsed, and then there is
also a download button so you can download this
and repurpose it that way or anyone
visiting your blog post can download this as well.
So that is something you need to be aware of.
And it will also have a voiced by Amazon Polly.
So, when you click on that it will take you back
to that homepage I started on for the Amazon Polly, alright.
So now lets take a listen to see
what British English Brian sounds like.
- [British English Brian] Optimize your security business
website for google search.
Okay so you've got a create looking website
for your security business.
Tripled checked it for typos.
Added your contact slash sales form.
Danced a jig and you are now idling by the computer
and phone waiting for sales to come pouring in.
- Let me pause English Brian there.
So that's pretty much Amazon Polly.
It does this on the fly.
It looks at your text and is
converting it automatically to an audio file,
once you load it up in the browser.
Which is amazing to me that it actually can do that.
It reads the text
and it reads what the text says
and then it converts it to an audio file.
And then from there you can repurpose it however you wish.
So that is Amazon Polly, what do you guys think?
I think this is a pretty neat type of service
and again, it is for pay
although the pay is very minimal.
And if something that you think
you can repurpose on, I think you might
as well try it out and go for it.
I'm going to keep going with Amazon Polly
see where I can use the recorded audio files.
And certainly maybe
send it off to a transcription service
or that type of thing.
But this is just the beginning, and I'm looking forward
to the future of what Amazon Polly brings.
So thanks again for checking out this
video I really appreciate it.
And if you have any questions, post in the comments below.
If you liked the video, give it a thumbs up.
And be sure to go to
LarrySnow.ME and check out Amazon Polly.
I'll leave the link to this blog post down below
in the description for you to go check out.
And ill see you in the next video.