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Shorter pause (<break>) than 200ms
Hi, I would like to insert pauses in a text that are shorter than 200ms. Therefore I have tried the following:
<speak>Demo Text: Please use L<break time="1ms"/>H </speak>
Unfortunately, no 1ms pasue is made here, but at least 250ms. See picture
The 1ms is only an example. If you use 100ms, you unfortunately also get more than 100ms pause. Namely 250ms + 100ms.
So my question is whether the minimum pause when using the "break" tag is always 250ms and my time is just added to it?
Thanks for help
Florian
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I understand that you want to know if there is a way to specify a shorter break when using the <break> ssml tag.
If you do need to adjust the length of the duration you can use the strength attribute values:
none: No pause. Use none to remove a normally occurring pause, such as after a period.
x-weak: Has the same strength as none, no pause.
weak: Sets a pause of the same duration as the pause after a comma.
medium: Has the same strength as weak.
strong: Sets a pause of the same duration as the pause after a sentence.
x-strong: Sets a pause of the same duration as the pause after a paragraph.
If you find the need to fine-tune the duration of the pause you can use the time attribute values, an example can be found here [1]:
[number]s: The duration of the pause, in seconds. The maximum duration is 10s.
[number]ms: The duration of the pause, in milliseconds. The maximum duration is 10000ms
Reference :
[1] Supported SSML Tags - Adding a Pause - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/polly/latest/dg/supportedtags.html#break-tag
Hi Wael, thanks for you reply.
I understand what you mean and now it's clear to me why it doesn't work. I want to insert a small pause in the middle of the sentence. This should be shorter than a ",".
But it follows from your answer that a pause shorter than 250ms, which presumably corresponds roughly to the comma, does not work. I find this quite irritating in your description and in principle your explanation would be desirable as a supplement to your description.
If there is a possibility, I would be grateful for a hint. I would like to spell out contents. The pauses caused by a simple blank are sometimes too short and the pauses caused by my break time are then too long ;)
PS: Unfortunately I cannot use the SSML tags "Say As characters" for neural voices.
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Hi Wael,
Thank you for your answer.
I am aware of these possibilities.
My question here is: Is there a minimum time?
Because a <break time="1ms"/> does not work. Even a time of 20ms is significantly longer.
if the <break time="Xms"/> tag is right after phrase/sentence/paragraph boundary (e.g. after full-stop or comma) then it makes the pause between phrases/sentences/paragraphs Xms longer. However, if there's no phrase/sentence/paragraph boundary right before the <break> tag, then it inserts phrase break (equivalent to adding "," in text) and then adds extra Xms pause on top of this. So, there's no minimum time, however, foo <break time="Xms"/> bar adds in fact silence of ~300ms (implicitly added phrase boundary) plus Xms.