Main content

Production Tutorial: Converting an EPUB into a DAISY Full Audio (Synthesized)

OS: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
Tools: Calibre, LibreOffice, DAISY Pipeline GUI

Step 1: Calibre

  1. Load the EPUB into Calibre.
  2. Have Calibre convert from EPUB into RTF (rich text format).
  3. Save it.

Step 2: LibreOffice

  1. Load the RTF into LibreOffice.
  2. Save as ODT.
  3. Set document language (Tools » Language » For all Text)
  4. Title: give it the style, Title.
  5. Chapters: go through the text, and give each chapter heading the style, Heading 1.
  6. Page numbers: insert a header; in the header, insert a page # field
  7. Images: provide Alternate Text (Right click » Picture... » Options » Alternative (text only)).
  8. Save as ODT again, just in case you need to come back to this document to adjust headings, etc.
  9. Save as RTF.

You may find that applying "Heading 1" style in LibreOffice Writer does not make the chapter titles show up in the Navigator pane.  To fix that, go into Tools > Outline numbering, choose "1" in the "Level" column, and set the Paragraph Style to "Heading 1" (you can do the same for all other levels).

Step 3: DAISY Pipeline GUI

  1. Create a job: RTF to DTBook (naming the output file like title-DTBook.xml), and run it.
  2. Create a job: TTS Narrator (DAISY XML to DAISY Book)—make sure to create a separate directory for the output—and run it.
    Note: This can take a long time as it does the text-to-speech.