snellingio / vmc Goto Github PK

Voice model creator for CMU Sphinx
===================================================================================================

This tool contains basic tools for creating a custom domain voice model for use with the 
PocketSphinx decoder.  It is also possible to use the voice models created by this tool as the 
basis for a test-to-speech engine.  

Note this tool has only been tested with Linux Mint 17.3 & 18.

**Please see the LICENSE file for terms of use.**

Linux/Unix installation
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You should install dependencies first; this ensures that python-dev, PocketSphinx, etc. are 
available.  Second, install vmc.  Some of the packages need to be installed within the user's home
directory; ~/tools is recommended.  This should be specified when installing the dependencies. Full 
installation on an AMD64 computer running Mint 18 would look like this:

Commands:

    $ cd ~/Downloads
    $ git clone https://github.com/umhau/vmc.git
    $ cd ./vmc
    $ sudo bash ./installdependencies.sh ~/tools
    $ sudo bash ./installvmc.sh

See use examples in the next section.

Usage instructions
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Example usage, recording new audio with 5 repetitions of each sentence:

    $ vmc.sh new_model -record ~/Downloads/sentences.txt ~/projects/new_model 5

Example usage, importing previously created audio files:

    $ vmc.sh ccmodel -import audio_files cc.list ~/tools/ccmodel

Note that the model name and the name of the model folder should be the same. Also note the 
repetitions specification is optional; it defaults to 1.

The model folder will contain all necessary files to run PocketSphinx with the newly created custom
voice model.

Note that dependencies are not checked when running vmc.sh.  To check dependencies, see the section
above. 

Background
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This tools brings together a number of disparate data files that are needed for creating a voice 
model.  This graph illustrates the data process involved:

                   word domain
                        +
                        |
                        v
        +-------+ sentence list+----------+
        |               +                 |
        |               |                 |
        v               v                 v
    dictionary      grammar: LM    voice samples
        +               +                 +
        |               |                 |
        |               v                 |
        +--------> voice model <----------+
                    training
                        +
                        |
                        v
                   voice model

Each of these steps, starting with the sentence list (given) and ending with the voice model are 
contained within this tool.