Youtube Audio Preview

Posted byRandall 576 Comments on Youtube Audio Preview

Wow. It seems someone at YouTUBE took this comic seriously and decided to add an “Audio Preview” feature. Now you can hear your comments read aloud to you.

Of course, it’s an optional button using speech synth rather than a mandatory dramatic reading, so it’ll just be used for entertainment by people who haven’t played with a speech synthesizer before:

But then, after a little more browsing around, I see this:

So maybe there’s hope after all.

576 replies on “Youtube Audio Preview”

  1. The feature shows up the fact that voice synth actually sounds slightly worse now that it’s free with XP or whatever than when it was a rare but fun program for the Commodore 64 (SAM, before it was assimilated by Microsoft).

    So, whilst I was plesantly suprised to see that YouTube followed XKCD so quickly (or was it just “great minds think alike”), I was more annoyed by the fact that the playlist drop-down menu is no longer sorted alphabetically, and the YT email system still works in a dimension with alternate-rate time.

    The dramatic voice, though, would still be totally awesome. Esp. if it changes intonation….

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  3. I too read your comic and then later saw they had added it on YouTube and made the connection.

    That’s pretty awesome!

    “So maybe there’s hope after all.” amazing.

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  4. Uhmm, I don’t see an Audio Preview button. Help? Is it American only or something like that?

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  5. I think its great Its a wonderful unique ahead of the curb option I think they should keep it. Hearing a synthesized voice with some emotion by changing tones in sentences that was cool. I want that program!

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  6. Haha! That is amazing. I just decided to take a look at the blag here, and then as soon as I saw this, rushed over to YouTube to see it for myself.

    It seems there’re xkcd fans at Google HQ!

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  7. I think its great Its fa wonderful unique ahead of the curb option I think they should keep it. Hearing a synthesized voice with some emotion by changing tones in sentences that was cool. I want that program!

    Like

  8. I think its great Its a wonderful unique ahead of the curb option I think they should keep it. Hearing a synthesized voice with some emotion by changing tones in sentences thatt was cool. I want that program!

    Like

  9. I think its great Its a wonderful unique ahead of the curb option I think they should keep it. Hearing a synthesized voice with some emotion by changing tones in sentencess thatis was cool. I want that program!

    Like

  10. I think its great Its a wonderful unique ahead of the curb option I think they should keep it. Hearing a synthesized voice with some emotion by changing tones in sentences that was cool. I want that program!

    Like

  12. I was playing around with the audio feature.

    And instead of saying “I am” it says “I A-M”.

    It made me giggle.

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  14. Bwahahaha… when I first noticed that, I immediately thought of xkcd. Awesome!

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  22. i am the only one that copies in the lyrics to ‘still alive’ from portal just to hear the audio preview of it?

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  24. Now all that websites need are Comment Contollers.

    A ghost person (or program) who merges comments that appear 10 or more times into one comment that doesn’t take up needless space.

    “thnx.” + “thanks” + “thanks alot” + “thanks for services” + “thank you” + “thanks” = “Thank you ^ 6” [From chat, kamerali chat, cameral? chat, mirc indr, youtube, Driver]

    And the power just changes as the merging increases. If a person wishes to read the multiple “thank you”‘s, they can click a drop down button, and all the messages can be seen.

    At least then we wouldn’t see, “I saw this on youtube, so I immediately came and checked out your blag! I can’t believe this! Epic! Real life imitates xkcd! You must have some Google fans! Now all we need is Morgan Freeman reading it!!! *squee*” over and over again on this page.

    Or, you know, people could extend common internet curtsey and read all the previous comments before they post their own – or at least scan them so that when they decide to reply, their comment will be fresh and unique.

    Keep the good ideas rolling, Mr. Munroe

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  26. Funny?

    Maybe, but it means that they had already a speech synthesizer made and tested. And right now it must be using about 20% of youtube’s servers’ capacity.

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  30. Oh, no way. No, no way. I did not even realize this until I decided, oh, let’s check out the blag…

    That is so sweet. Ha ha ha… Yay for awesome inspiring comics, eh?

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  31. lol

    the first thing i remembered when i saw the button was you and the comic 😀

    you definitely have power, young man 😛

    keep it up 😉

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  33. I’m kind of worried. I never thought I was a moron but the audio preview made me think that perhaps I am. Now I’m scared to comment on anything.
    Perhaps even this was too far. Actually, looking back, I can see I’m not the only moron.

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  35. u can actually write a lot of crap like, “soock my cock u stuped son of a beach, come make me a blow job fuken useless nigga” and the audio preview will say it.

    MY POINT IS,, IS HELLA FUN HAHAHA

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  39. At least then we wouldn’t see, “I saw this on youtube, so I immediately came and checked out your blag! I can’t believe this! Epic! Real life imitates xkcd! You must have some Google fans! Now all we need is Morgan Freeman reading it!!! *squee*” over and over again on this page.

    Like

  40. I want a Morgan Freeman voice emulator that Ad-libs to what ever it is reading…

    That would win my internets.

    reCaptcha – Actors Swayze – He’s more than one?

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  43. I thought I was hallucinating when I first saw that on Youtube and immediately remembered the comic. It really was a brilliant idea…

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  44. Now that Youtube’s problems are solved, it would really be nice if someone could figure out a way to keep me from having to scroll through a million “me too” types of posts.

    Maybe certain key word could show up as votes rather than actual posts… I don’t know, or you could fold similar posts into the same “thread” like a newsreader or something.

    Initially I liked your idea better, but the automated threading would not only group same-ish items, but also items with ideas that go along the same lines (so you could read threads that interest you, not just avoid pointless threads). If you had a good “these are similar” algorithm… I bet Google could do it.

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  45. Ha, before the third paragraph, I said </irony ref=”jhai”>, not thinking it would parse HTML.

    Obviously it does parse HTML. Partially?

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  47. The “how is babby formed” one was very funny… I’ve actually heard it before. I love how it struggles to pronounce the very misspelled words… hilarious.

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