Google-Cloud-Speech speach-to-text error #4058

Question

I'd like to recognize an audio file in a NodeJS server.

I'm using the command line on Windows 10, and the Node's version is 10.6.0, I've installed @google-cloud/speech regulary with npm. Morest I've declared the environment variable for credentials (explained here https://cloud.google.com/docs/authentication/getting-started?hl=en), and I've copyed the json file in the "credential" folder :

set GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="C:\Users\Me\Documents\NodeJs\Project1\credentials\RDCommandeVocale-b521de3b57d9.json"

The file was encoded via ffmpeg with this command :

ffmpeg -i newRecording.aac -vol 512 -c flac -ar 16000 newRecording.flac

My source code is :

const folderName = "uploaded";
const fileName = "newRecording";
const client = new speech.SpeechClient();

const config = {
  encoding:"FLAC",
  sampleRateHertz: 16000,
  languageCode: "fr-FR"
};
const audioBytes = fs.readFileSync(`${__dirname}\\` + folderName + "\\" + fileName + ".flac").toString('base64');
//This doesn't work else with this : 
//const audioBytes = fs.readFileSync(".\\uploaded" + fileName + ".flac").toString('base64');
// ... nor this one
//const audioBytes = fs.readFileSync("./uploaded" + fileName + ".flac").toString('base64');

const request = {
  config: config,
  audio: audioBytes,
};

client.recognize(request).then( response=>{
  const transcription = response.results 
  .map(result => result.alternatives[0].transcript)// récupérer uniquement la première alternative
  .join('\n');
  console.log("Textual transcription: ", transcription );
  res.status(200)
  .json({ status: "success", message: transcription });
},
(err)=>{
  console.log("Transcription ERROR : ", JSON.stringify(err));
  res.status(500)
  .json({ status: "error", message: JSON.stringify(err) });
});

I get this error :

Textual transcription : {"errno":-4058,"syscall":"lstat","code":"ENOENT","path":"c:\Users\Me\Documents\Me\NodeJs\Project1\\"C:"}

Does this error type is referenced anywhere in Google Cloud API docs ?

I think it could be a directory error (idea taken here : [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48370690/cloud-functions-deploy-error-during-lint-on-windows-enoent-enoent-no-such-fil]), but could you tell me if it could be an authentication issue ? Does Google Cloud's authentication is required to send a request to Google Cloud Speech API please ? — François Gardien, Oct 02 '19 at 10:20

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 09 '19 at 10:01

The following code snippet is fully functional and will display the response object on the console. You were missing the fact that the audio property of the request object expects a { contents: audioBytes } object.

For this test, I also removed all the server-side code you had added.

As you seem to prefer the Promise approach (as opposed to await/async), I kept it, but used the .catch method rather than catching any errors, in a second function inside the .then as you did.

const speech = require('@google-cloud/speech');
const fs = require('fs')
const client = new speech.SpeechClient();

const config = {
    encoding: 'FLAC',
    sampleRateHertz: 16000,
    languageCode: 'en'
};

const audioBytes = fs.readFileSync('test.flac').toString('base64');

const request = {
    config: config,
    audio: {
        content: audioBytes
    }
};

client
    .recognize(request)
    .then( response => {
        const transcription = response.results 
        console.log("Textual transcription: ", JSON.stringify(response, {}, 2));
    })
    .catch((err) => {
        console.log("Transcription ERROR : ", err);
    });

With my audio file, I got this response:

$ node transcribe-test.js 
Textual transcription:  [
  {
    "results": [
      {
        "alternatives": [
          {
            "words": [],
            "transcript": "the following is an audio abstract for 2019",
            "confidence": 0.8660579323768616
          }
        ],
        "channelTag": 0
      }
    ]
  },
  null,
  null
]

Good luck!

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 04 '19 at 17:26

0

This doesn't seem to be an error with Google's Text-to-speech service, but an error of a directory that was not found.

Explore Node's built-in path module, and especially the join() method.

You may want to rewrite this line:

const audioBytes = fs.readFileSync(`${__dirname}\\` + folderName + "\\" + fileName + ".flac").toString('base64');

like this:

const path = require('path')
...
const file = path.join(__dirname, folderName, fileName, '.flac')
const audioBytes = fs.readFileSync(file).toString('base64')

Although this may not be important for you, this will also work on systems other than Windows as Node will automatically do the right thing.

answered Oct 04 '19 at 17:26

jfix

477
4
21

It's ok to use 'path' module, I see that the file exists with this : `console.log("audioBytes ="+JSON.stringify(audioBytes) );`. But now it catch an error with this error in the debug console : `error = {}` It seems that the "empty response" could be caused by a bad file format, according to this documentation : https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/docs/troubleshooting. I will check for the good file format. Thanks ! – François Gardien Oct 07 '19 at 17:42
@FrançoisGardien I would recommend removing the `JSON.stringify(err)` in your log statement and just keep `err`. At least in my tests, this produced more informative error messages. – jfix Oct 09 '19 at 09:30

Google-Cloud-Speech speach-to-text error #4058

2 Answers2