Automating Immersive Reading
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Automating Immersive Reading
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Re: Automating Immersive Reading
#2I took a week of from work recently to reimplement Storyteller's forced alignment algorithm. Storyteller[1] is an open source, self hosted platform for creating, managing, and reading/listening to "readaloud" books — books that have audiobook narration built in and can highlight each sentence (and/or word, with this new algorithm!) as it's read aloud. Forced alignment is the process of determining where each piece of text starts and ends in the audiobook.
Anyway, I am really pleased with how the new algorithm turned out! Hopefully someone else finds it interesting as well.
Re: Automating Immersive Reading
#3This is really impressive! One thing I’ve often wanted is a way to listen to an ebook (say, while cooking), and then later be able to sit down and read from where I left off. This essentially requires the same functionality that Storyteller offers (syncing progress through an ebook and audiobook), though arguably overkill for this use case (since I could handle a more coarse alignment). In any case, is this something Storyteller would be good for? Or are there other tools for the job?
Re: Automating Immersive Reading
#4I took a week of from work recently to reimplement Storyteller's forced alignment algorithm. Storyteller[1] is an open source, self hosted platform for creating, managing, and reading/listening to "readaloud" books — books that have audiobook narration built in and can highlight each sentence (and/or word, with this new algorithm!) as it's read aloud. Forced alignment is the process of determining where each piece of…
This is excellent! I wanted this. I had noticed that Kindle had limited feature like this for certain books that support audiobooks. I had tried this style of reading with audiobook and ebook without a any automated sync, but hadn't pursued it. This looks cool. :)
Re: Automating Immersive Reading
#5This is really impressive! One thing I’ve often wanted is a way to listen to an ebook (say, while cooking), and then later be able to sit down and read from where I left off. This essentially requires the same functionality that Storyteller offers (syncing progress through an ebook and audiobook), though arguably overkill for this use case (since I could handle a more coarse alignment). In any case, is this something…
That is actually the exact use case that I originally built Storyteller for! I wanted to listen to my books on long runs, and then switch to reading when I got back.
The Storyteller mobile apps have great support for this, I think. They have fully fledged audiobook players and ebook readers, and you can switch between the two with one tap. And then of course you can also double tap on a sentence and start playing from there, with the app highlighting the currently read sentence.
Re: Automating Immersive Reading
#6I took a week of from work recently to reimplement Storyteller's forced alignment algorithm. Storyteller[1] is an open source, self hosted platform for creating, managing, and reading/listening to "readaloud" books — books that have audiobook narration built in and can highlight each sentence (and/or word, with this new algorithm!) as it's read aloud. Forced alignment is the process of determining where each piece of…
This is excellent! I wanted this. I had noticed that Kindle had limited feature like this for certain books that support audiobooks. I had tried this style of reading with audiobook and ebook without a any automated sync, but hadn't pursued it. This looks cool. :)
Thanks! We're improving it all the time — we're working on big new releases ("v3") for the web app and mobile apps. There's a Discord server linked in the docs if you ever need any help out want to chat!
Re: Automating Immersive Reading
#7This is really impressive! One thing I’ve often wanted is a way to listen to an ebook (say, while cooking), and then later be able to sit down and read from where I left off. This essentially requires the same functionality that Storyteller offers (syncing progress through an ebook and audiobook), though arguably overkill for this use case (since I could handle a more coarse alignment). In any case, is this something…
Storyteller works great for this. It even syncs your position across devices. So when I really want to settle in to read, I go ahead and switch from my iPhone where I was listening to my Boox e-ink reader which syncs right to where I left off.
Re: Automating Immersive Reading
#8This is really impressive! One thing I’ve often wanted is a way to listen to an ebook (say, while cooking), and then later be able to sit down and read from where I left off. This essentially requires the same functionality that Storyteller offers (syncing progress through an ebook and audiobook), though arguably overkill for this use case (since I could handle a more coarse alignment). In any case, is this something…
That is actually the exact use case that I originally built Storyteller for! I wanted to listen to my books on long runs, and then switch to reading when I got back. The Storyteller mobile apps have great support for this, I think. They have fully fledged audiobook players and ebook readers, and you can switch between the two with one tap. And then of course you can also double tap on a sentence and start playing fro…
What about reading on a koreader? Is bookbridge still the best bet?
Re: Automating Immersive Reading
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is actually the exact use case that I originally built Storyteller for! I wanted to listen to my books on long runs, and then switch to reading when I got back. The Storyteller mobile apps have great support for this, I think. They have fully fledged audiobook players and ebook readers, and you can switch between the two with one tap. And then of course you can also double tap on a sentence and start playing fro…
What about reading on a koreader? Is bookbridge still the best bet?
There are two koreader plugins:
1. StorytellerSync (https://github.com/Sirozha1337/storytellersync.koplugin), which syncs your KOReader progress directly to your Storyteller server
2. Audiobook (https://github.com/stradichenko/audiobook.koplugin), which has a WIP media overlay implementation that works with Storyteller readalouds
Re: Automating Immersive Reading
#10I generated an immersive reading for Athenaze in a few afternoons with Claude