Turning text into audio file and upload to Overcast

iOS
1

Is there a way to automate the process of turning a text (pdf which has been OCRed) into an audio file and uploading it to overcast?

2
  1. Are you doing this process manually now? If so, how are you currently converting PDF to MP3? Something local, something online, etc?
  2. Do you want to do all of the automation on device, or are offloading activities to a Mac/PC/Web/Mechanical Turk viable options for you; and for the latter is cost an issue?
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3

I don’t think there’s any way to automate uploading something to Overcast (I assume you mean as if you’d used https://overcast.fm/uploads ?)

…however, I would be thrilled to be proven wrong.

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4

I believe you are right on that, but I’m pretty sure that an approach using Huffduffer can mitigate that limitation if everything has to be on IOS.

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5

I can’t think of any way of doing it, and was hoping that someone out there might have a solution. It doesn’t necessarily have to happen on one device.

I would be happy to get a sound file created and manually upload to Overcast.

Maybe I’m hoping for the impossible here.

6

I think a perfect one shot on device process isn’t looking likely. But maybe someone out there has the key.

Here’s how close I can suggest…

The multi-conversion service Zamzar looks like it might be able to convert a PDF to MP3. They also offer an API, so you should be able to automate this using say Shortcuts.

Then you manually upload it to your online Overcast account.

Or…

With the returned file, you thenupload it somewhere online that you can access.

Once uploaded you add it to Huffduffer which you also have set as a feed in Overcast.

Revise various steps if you are using software on your own always on machine (e.g.Text2Speech Pro for audio file generation, Hazel for triggering file processing, Fake web browser for interacting with Zamzar/Overcast online), or any paid for human driven automation (e.g. a text to audio recording service using actual people to read your text).

Hope there’s something useful in there for you.

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7

This is probably the closest i’ll get to it! Thank you so much!!

8

That sounds very interesting. Just to complement this: In case you have your own always on machine, the text to speech part could also be accomplished with an Automator Workflow, I believe.

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