Transcribe short audio files

This page demonstrates how to transcribe a short audio file to text using synchronous speech recognition.

Synchronous speech recognition returns the recognized text for short audio (less than 60 seconds).

Audio content can be sent directly to Speech-to-Text from a local file, or Speech-to-Text can process audio content stored in a Cloud Storage bucket . See the quotas and limits page for limits on synchronous speech recognition requests.

Before you begin

  1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.
  2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Go to project selector

  3. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project .

  4. Enable the Speech-to-Text APIs.

    Enable the APIs

  5. Make sure that you have the following role or roles on the project: Cloud Speech Administrator

    Check for the roles

    1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the IAM page.

      Go to IAM
    2. Select the project.
    3. In the Principal column, find all rows that identify you or a group that you're included in. To learn which groups you're included in, contact your administrator.

    4. For all rows that specify or include you, check the Role column to see whether the list of roles includes the required roles.

    Grant the roles

    1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the IAM page.

      Go to IAM
    2. Select the project.
    3. Click Grant access .
    4. In the New principals field, enter your user identifier. This is typically the email address for a Google Account.

    5. In the Select a role list, select a role.
    6. To grant additional roles, click Add another role and add each additional role.
    7. Click Save .
  6. Install the Google Cloud CLI.

  7. If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity .

  8. To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

    gcloud  
    init
  9. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Go to project selector

  10. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project .

  11. Enable the Speech-to-Text APIs.

    Enable the APIs

  12. Make sure that you have the following role or roles on the project: Cloud Speech Administrator

    Check for the roles

    1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the IAM page.

      Go to IAM
    2. Select the project.
    3. In the Principal column, find all rows that identify you or a group that you're included in. To learn which groups you're included in, contact your administrator.

    4. For all rows that specify or include you, check the Role column to see whether the list of roles includes the required roles.

    Grant the roles

    1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the IAM page.

      Go to IAM
    2. Select the project.
    3. Click Grant access .
    4. In the New principals field, enter your user identifier. This is typically the email address for a Google Account.

    5. In the Select a role list, select a role.
    6. To grant additional roles, click Add another role and add each additional role.
    7. Click Save .
  13. Install the Google Cloud CLI.

  14. If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity .

  15. To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

    gcloud  
    init
  16. Client libraries can use Application Default Credentials to easily authenticate with Google APIs and send requests to those APIs. With Application Default Credentials, you can test your application locally and deploy it without changing the underlying code. For more information, see Authenticate for using client libraries .

  17. If you're using a local shell, then create local authentication credentials for your user account:

    gcloud  
    auth  
    application-default  
    login

    You don't need to do this if you're using Cloud Shell.

    If an authentication error is returned, and you are using an external identity provider (IdP), confirm that you have signed in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity .

Also ensure you have installed the client library .

Perform synchronous speech recognition on a local file

Here is an example of performing synchronous speech recognition on a local audio file:

Python

  from 
  
 google.cloud.speech_v2 
  
 import 
 SpeechClient 
 from 
  
 google.cloud.speech_v2.types 
  
 import 
 cloud_speech 
 # TODO(developer): Update and un-comment below line 
 # PROJECT_ID = "your-project-id" 
 # Instantiates a client 
 client 
 = 
 SpeechClient 
 () 
 # Reads a file as bytes 
 with 
 open 
 ( 
 "resources/audio.wav" 
 , 
 "rb" 
 ) 
 as 
 f 
 : 
 audio_content 
 = 
 f 
 . 
 read 
 () 
 config 
 = 
 cloud_speech 
 . 
 RecognitionConfig 
 ( 
 auto_decoding_config 
 = 
 cloud_speech 
 . 
  AutoDetectDecodingConfig 
 
 (), 
 language_codes 
 = 
 [ 
 "en-US" 
 ], 
 model 
 = 
 "long" 
 , 
 ) 
 request 
 = 
 cloud_speech 
 . 
 RecognizeRequest 
 ( 
 recognizer 
 = 
 f 
 "projects/ 
 { 
 PROJECT_ID 
 } 
 /locations/global/recognizers/_" 
 , 
 config 
 = 
 config 
 , 
 content 
 = 
 audio_content 
 , 
 ) 
 # Transcribes the audio into text 
 response 
 = 
 client 
 . 
  recognize 
 
 ( 
 request 
 = 
 request 
 ) 
 for 
 result 
 in 
 response 
 . 
 results 
 : 
 print 
 ( 
 f 
 "Transcript: 
 { 
 result 
 . 
 alternatives 
 [ 
 0 
 ] 
 . 
 transcript 
 } 
 " 
 ) 
 

Perform synchronous speech recognition on a remote file

For your convenience, Speech-to-Text API can perform synchronous speech recognition directly on an audio file located in Cloud Storage, without the need to send the contents of the audio file in the body of your request.

Speech-to-Text uses a service account to access your files in Cloud Storage. By default, the service account has access to Cloud Storage files in the same project.

The service account email address is the following:

 service- PROJECT_NUMBER 
@gcp-sa-speech.iam.gserviceaccount.com 

In order to transcribe Cloud Storage files in another project, you can give this service account the Speech-to-Text Service Agent role in the other project:

 gcloud  
projects  
add-iam-policy-binding  
 PROJECT_ID 
  
 \ 
  
--member = 
serviceAccount:service- PROJECT_NUMBER 
@gcp-sa-speech.iam.gserviceaccount.com  
 \ 
  
--role = 
roles/speech.serviceAgent 

More information about project IAM policy is available at Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations .

You can also give the service account more granular access by giving it permission to a specific Cloud Storage bucket:

 gcloud  
storage  
buckets  
add-iam-policy-binding  
gs:// BUCKET_NAME 
  
 \ 
  
--member = 
serviceAccount:service- PROJECT_NUMBER 
@gcp-sa-speech.iam.gserviceaccount.com  
 \ 
  
--role = 
roles/storage.admin 

More information about managing access to Cloud Storage is available at Create and Manage access control lists in the Cloud Storage documentation.

Here is an example of performing synchronous speech recognition on a file located in Cloud Storage:

Python

  from 
  
 google.cloud.speech_v2 
  
 import 
 SpeechClient 
 from 
  
 google.cloud.speech_v2.types 
  
 import 
 cloud_speech 
 # Instantiates a client 
 client 
 = 
 SpeechClient 
 () 
 # TODO(developer): Update and un-comment below line 
 # PROJECT_ID = "your-project-id" 
 config 
 = 
 cloud_speech 
 . 
 RecognitionConfig 
 ( 
 auto_decoding_config 
 = 
 cloud_speech 
 . 
  AutoDetectDecodingConfig 
 
 (), 
 language_codes 
 = 
 [ 
 "en-US" 
 ], 
 model 
 = 
 "long" 
 , 
 ) 
 request 
 = 
 cloud_speech 
 . 
 RecognizeRequest 
 ( 
 recognizer 
 = 
 f 
 "projects/ 
 { 
 PROJECT_ID 
 } 
 /locations/global/recognizers/_" 
 , 
 config 
 = 
 config 
 , 
 uri 
 = 
 "gs://cloud-samples-data/speech/audio.flac" 
 , 
 # URI of the audio file in GCS 
 ) 
 # Transcribes the audio into text 
 response 
 = 
 client 
 . 
  recognize 
 
 ( 
 request 
 = 
 request 
 ) 
 for 
 result 
 in 
 response 
 . 
 results 
 : 
 print 
 ( 
 f 
 "Transcript: 
 { 
 result 
 . 
 alternatives 
 [ 
 0 
 ] 
 . 
 transcript 
 } 
 " 
 ) 
 

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used on this page, follow these steps.

  1. Optional: Revoke the authentication credentials that you created, and delete the local credential file.

    gcloud  
    auth  
    application-default  
    revoke
  2. Optional: Revoke credentials from the gcloud CLI.

    gcloud  
    auth  
    revoke

Console

  • Everything in the project is deleted.If you used an existing project for the tasks in this document, when you delete it, you also delete any other work you've done in the project.
  • Custom project IDs are lost.When you created this project, you might have created a custom project ID that you want to use in the future. To preserve the URLs that use the project ID, such as an appspot.com URL, delete selected resources inside the project instead of deleting the whole project.

If you plan to explore multiple architectures, tutorials, or quickstarts, reusing projects can help you avoid exceeding project quota limits.

  • In the Google Cloud console, go to the Manage resources page.

    Go to Manage resources

  • In the project list, select the project that you want to delete, and then click Delete .
  • In the dialog, type the project ID, and then click Shut down to delete the project.
  • gcloud

    • Everything in the project is deleted.If you used an existing project for the tasks in this document, when you delete it, you also delete any other work you've done in the project.
    • Custom project IDs are lost.When you created this project, you might have created a custom project ID that you want to use in the future. To preserve the URLs that use the project ID, such as an appspot.com URL, delete selected resources inside the project instead of deleting the whole project.

    If you plan to explore multiple architectures, tutorials, or quickstarts, reusing projects can help you avoid exceeding project quota limits.

  • In the Google Cloud console, go to the Manage resources page.

    Go to Manage resources

  • In the project list, select the project that you want to delete, and then click Delete .
  • In the dialog, type the project ID, and then click Shut down to delete the project.
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