MAC's "say" command to MP3

Question

I want to read a very long text with the SAY mac's command (say -f file.txt), and to record the output to file.mp3. I thought about using ffmpeg to record all of it, but then i'll need to wait for all the reading process to complete..

I don't really need to listen to it, so if there is a way to directly have an mp3 file just by hitting enter, it would be great..

There is also this project txt2mp3mac but i can't use it in a shell script..

Thanks..

Solution

I'm not on a Mac right now, so I can't test, but this page suggests you can do

say -f script.txt -o greetings.aiff

to load what should be said from script.txt and save the audio output as greetings.aiff. You can then convert it to mp3 using lame with

lame -m m greetings.aiff greetings.mp3

Definitely try the different voices. :D

Comments

[Carl Norum]

Why can't you use txt2mp3mac in a shell script?

[Oussama L.]

there is no cli for this program!

[Carl Norum]

It appears to be an open-source applecsript app, it should be easy to modify, I'd think.

[Mycah]

Thanks! For Homebrew users that need Lame: brew install lame