TomTom XL 335 Voice Issue

[simong6]

Morning all,

I've added a new (original) voice to my tomtom its the UK 'Kathy' voice -

on the TomTom Home software it displays as 'Kathy' however once i remove the device from my computer and navigate to the voices folder it displays as 'Lei, Chinese' has anybody any ideas on how to correct this?

 

[canderson]

First - does the actual voice wind up in English with an Irish accent with a sort of Scottish twist, or Chinese? I ask because that will determine whether it might be more than one errant file involved.

There are three files associated with any 'non-computer' TomTom-supplied voices of the sort Kathy represents. In the "voices" folder of your unit, you will find a collection of *.chk (the voice), *.tlv and *.vif files. The name of the voice comes from the *.vif file (I think), not the *.tlv file.

In any case, you're looking for files with the ID number 162... data162.chk, data162.tlv and data162.vif.

First see if those are in your "voices" folder. Then open up the data162.vif file with your favorite text editor and see what it says and report back.

 

[simong6]

Thanks for that Canderson.

Yeah the voice is English with an Irish accent- if you know of her, the lady that does the voice is Kathy Clugston. I just know her as the Posh Radio 4 Lady from the Scott Mills Radio Show on BBC Radio 1!

I've checked the Voices folder on the root of my device

and I don't have any 162 files - all the files that point to the 'Kathy' Voice are 119

 

[canderson]

Hmmm... would have sworn that Kathy was 162. Perhaps they've changed numbers or I've misremembered the numbering scheme. So let's look at your 119 files. For starters, looking at the *.vif file, what do you see with a text editor? You can also open the *.tlv file - it's largely binary but the important bit is in text - but I don't think that is where the name comes from.

Edit: whether it's 119 or 162 (or even 71) seems to be dependent upon model age. Not sure why.

 

[simong6]

well, i changed the files to 119, and it changed the file to Kathy!

however the Lei icon is still on there greyed out

 

[canderson]

I'm confused - what files did you 'change' to 119 and why? All we wanted to do to start was look at the contents of those two data119 files.

 

[Andy_P]

Put them all back as they were, before everyone gets more confused!
Then open the .vif with note pad like canderson asked and tell us what you see.

It's perfectly possible to change the numbers for a set of files BUT you need to edit the contents of the files to match the filenames as well, otherwise you get odd results like you've seen.

------------------------

Looking at some of my backups, I have Kathy v1 from a Go720 as:
data119.chk
data119.tlv
data119.vif
(and I also have an image file for her
data119.bmp)

I also have Kathy v7 from a Go 940 as just
data162.chk
data162.vif
(the .tlv is not strictly necessary, it's just used by Home when it's trying to manage the voices)
But I've a note to remind me that (as supplied) that one was missing the "You have reached your destination" instruction!

I also have her as #162 on a different device and the data162.chk file size is slightly larger so that might be a complete one!

So we should be able to sort out what your .vif file SHOULD say, quite easily.