Speech: encoding for speech to text ?

[amgsharma]

API: Speech
MAX OSX
Python v35

I'm trying to set up a basic example for speech to text.
I've used ffmpeg to extract audio from an mp4, then convert this audio from mp3 to flac.

My code is as follows (as per the example on the SPEECH API documentation)

import io
import os

Imports the Google Cloud client library

from google.cloud import speech
from google.cloud.speech import enums
from google.cloud.speech import types

Instantiates a client

client = speech.SpeechClient()

The name of the audio file to transcribe

file_name = os.path.join(
os.path.dirname(file),
'data','mp4s', 'audio',
'0BuayZmFrINBZHBG7uHMAI4U6xx4MkRC.flac')

Loads the audio into memory

with io.open(file_name, 'rb') as audio_file:
content = audio_file.read()
audio = types.RecognitionAudio(content=content)

config = types.RecognitionConfig(
# encoding=enums.RecognitionConfig.AudioEncoding.LINEAR16,
encoding='FLAC',
sample_rate_hertz=48000,
language_code='en-US')
import pdb;pdb.set_trace()

Detects speech in the audio file

response = client.recognize(config, audio)

for result in response.results:
print('Transcript: {}'.format(result.alternatives[0].transcript))

The current error I'm trying to debug is as follows:
google.gax.errors.RetryError: RetryError(Exception occurred in retry method that was not classified as transient, caused by <_Rendezvous of RPC that terminated with (StatusCode.INVALID_ARGUMENT, Invalid audio channel count)>)

Haven't seen anything about this on the googles, so pardon if its a repeat.

[amgsharma]

Answer: Ensure 1 channel when converting as per this answer there:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39620198/google-cloud-speech-syncrecognize-invalid-argument

[dariushazimi]

@amgsharma Were you able to resolve the issue? Can you share the final version?

[tseaver]

@dariushazimi You need to ensure that the audio file to be converted is mono, not stereo.