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The utts.data file

This file is the main index of the unit selection database. Festival uses it to discover which files it can select units from.

You will find a file called utts.data in your ss folder. This is the file that Festival uses to define the unit selection database. The initial version of this file contains the CMU ARCTIC sentences.

The utts.data file looks like this:

( arctic_a0001 "Author of the danger trail, Philip Steels, etc." )
( arctic_a0002 "Not at this particular case, Tom, apologized Whittemore." )
( arctic_a0003 "For the twentieth time that evening the two men shook hands." )

Each line of the file represents one utterance in your database, in the following format:

  1. An opening parenthesis ‘(‘
  2. A unique identifier which will be used as the filename for any files which relate to this utterance. The ARCTIC sentences use filename of the format arctic_lnnnn; your own supplemental material should used identifiers of the format yourname_nnnn (where nnnn starts again from 0001)
  3. The text, inside double quotes
  4. A closing parenthesis ‘)’.