Use codec compressed audio input

Handling compressed audio is implemented using GStreamer. For licensing reasons GStreamer binaries are not compiled and linked with the Speech SDK. Developers need to install several dependencies and plugins, see Installing on Windows or Installing on Linux. GStreamer binaries need to be in the system path, so that the Speech SDK can load the binaries during runtime. For example, on Windows, if the Speech SDK is able to find libgstreamer-1.0-0.dll or gstreamer-1.0-0.dll (for latest GStreamer) during runtime, it means the GStreamer binaries are in the system path.

Handling compressed audio is implemented using GStreamer. For licensing reasons GStreamer binaries are not compiled and linked with the Speech SDK. Developers need to install several dependencies and plugins.

sudo apt install libgstreamer1.0-0 \
gstreamer1.0-plugins-base \
gstreamer1.0-plugins-good \
gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad \
gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly

sudo yum install gstreamer1 \
gstreamer1-plugins-base \
gstreamer1-plugins-good \
gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free \
gstreamer1-plugins-ugly-free

Handling compressed audio is implemented using GStreamer. For licensing reasons GStreamer binaries are not compiled and linked with the Speech SDK. Instead, you'll need to use the prebuilt binaries for Android. To download the prebuilt libraries, see installing for Android development.

libgstreamer_android.so is required. Make sure that all the GStreamer plugins (from Android.mk file below) are linked in libgstreamer_android.so. When using the latest speech SDK (1.16 and above) with GStreamer version 1.18.3, libc++_shared.so is also required to be present from android ndk.

GSTREAMER_PLUGINS := coreelements app audioconvert mpg123 \
    audioresample audioparsers ogg opusparse \
    opus wavparse alaw mulaw flac

An example Android.mk and Application.mk file are provided below. Follow these steps to create the gstreamer shared object:libgstreamer_android.so.

# Android.mk
LOCAL_PATH := $(call my-dir)

include $(CLEAR_VARS)

LOCAL_MODULE    := dummy
LOCAL_SHARED_LIBRARIES := gstreamer_android
include $(BUILD_SHARED_LIBRARY)

ifndef GSTREAMER_ROOT_ANDROID
$(error GSTREAMER_ROOT_ANDROID is not defined!)
endif

ifndef APP_BUILD_SCRIPT
$(error APP_BUILD_SCRIPT is not defined!)
endif

ifndef TARGET_ARCH_ABI
$(error TARGET_ARCH_ABI is not defined!)
endif

ifeq ($(TARGET_ARCH_ABI),armeabi)
GSTREAMER_ROOT        := $(GSTREAMER_ROOT_ANDROID)/arm
else ifeq ($(TARGET_ARCH_ABI),armeabi-v7a)
GSTREAMER_ROOT        := $(GSTREAMER_ROOT_ANDROID)/armv7
else ifeq ($(TARGET_ARCH_ABI),arm64-v8a)
GSTREAMER_ROOT        := $(GSTREAMER_ROOT_ANDROID)/arm64
else ifeq ($(TARGET_ARCH_ABI),x86)
GSTREAMER_ROOT        := $(GSTREAMER_ROOT_ANDROID)/x86
else ifeq ($(TARGET_ARCH_ABI),x86_64)
GSTREAMER_ROOT        := $(GSTREAMER_ROOT_ANDROID)/x86_64
else
$(error Target arch ABI not supported: $(TARGET_ARCH_ABI))
endif

GSTREAMER_NDK_BUILD_PATH  := $(GSTREAMER_ROOT)/share/gst-android/ndk-build/
include $(GSTREAMER_NDK_BUILD_PATH)/plugins.mk
GSTREAMER_PLUGINS         :=  $(GSTREAMER_PLUGINS_CORE) \ 
                              $(GSTREAMER_PLUGINS_CODECS) \ 
                              $(GSTREAMER_PLUGINS_PLAYBACK) \
                              $(GSTREAMER_PLUGINS_CODECS_GPL) \
                              $(GSTREAMER_PLUGINS_CODECS_RESTRICTED)
GSTREAMER_EXTRA_LIBS      := -liconv -lgstbase-1.0 -lGLESv2 -lEGL
include $(GSTREAMER_NDK_BUILD_PATH)/gstreamer-1.0.mk

# Application.mk
APP_STL = c++_shared
APP_PLATFORM = android-21
APP_BUILD_SCRIPT = Android.mk

You can build libgstreamer_android.so using the following command on Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04. The following command lines have only been tested for GStreamer Android version 1.14.4 with Android NDK b16b.

# Assuming wget and unzip already installed on the system
mkdir buildLibGstreamer
cd buildLibGstreamer
wget https://dl.google.com/android/repository/android-ndk-r16b-linux-x86_64.zip
unzip -q -o android-ndk-r16b-linux-x86_64.zip
export PATH=$PATH:$(pwd)/android-ndk-r16b
export NDK_PROJECT_PATH=$(pwd)/android-ndk-r16b
wget https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/pkg/android/1.14.4/gstreamer-1.0-android-universal-1.14.4.tar.bz2
mkdir gstreamer_android
tar -xjf gstreamer-1.0-android-universal-1.14.4.tar.bz2 -C $(pwd)/gstreamer_android/
export GSTREAMER_ROOT_ANDROID=$(pwd)/gstreamer_android

mkdir gstreamer
# Copy the Application.mk and Android.mk from the documentation above and put it inside $(pwd)/gstreamer

# Enable only one of the following at one time to create the shared object for the targeted ABI
echo "building for armeabi-v7a. libgstreamer_android.so will be placed in $(pwd)/armeabi-v7a"
ndk-build -C $(pwd)/gstreamer "NDK_APPLICATION_MK=Application.mk" APP_ABI=armeabi-v7a NDK_LIBS_OUT=$(pwd)

#echo "building for arm64-v8a. libgstreamer_android.so will be placed in $(pwd)/arm64-v8a"
#ndk-build -C $(pwd)/gstreamer "NDK_APPLICATION_MK=Application.mk" APP_ABI=arm64-v8a NDK_LIBS_OUT=$(pwd)

#echo "building for x86_64. libgstreamer_android.so will be placed in $(pwd)/x86_64"
#ndk-build -C $(pwd)/gstreamer "NDK_APPLICATION_MK=Application.mk" APP_ABI=x86_64 NDK_LIBS_OUT=$(pwd)

#echo "building for x86. libgstreamer_android.so will be placed in $(pwd)/x86"
#ndk-build -C $(pwd)/gstreamer "NDK_APPLICATION_MK=Application.mk" APP_ABI=x86 NDK_LIBS_OUT=$(pwd)

Once the shared object (libgstreamer_android.so) is built application developer needs to place the shared object in the Android app, so that it can be loaded by speech SDK.

Handling compressed audio is implemented using GStreamer. For licensing reasons GStreamer binaries are not compiled and linked with the Speech SDK. Developers need to install several dependencies and plugins, see Installing on Windows or Installing on Linux. GStreamer binaries need to be in the system path, so that the Speech SDK can load the binaries during runtime. For example, on Windows, if the Speech SDK is able to find libgstreamer-1.0-0.dll during runtime, it means the GStreamer binaries are in the system path.

Speech SDK can use GStreamer to handle compressed audio. However, for licensing reasons GStreamer binaries are not compiled and linked with the Speech SDK. Developers need to install several dependencies and plugins, see Installing on Linux. Go language is only supported in Speech SDK on the Linux platform. See Speech SDK for Go to get started with Microsoft Speech SDK in Go.

To configure Speech SDK to accept compressed audio input, create PullAudioInputStream or PushAudioInputStream. Then, create an AudioConfig from an instance of your stream class, specifying the compression format of the stream. Find related sample code snippets in About the Speech SDK audio input stream API.

Let's assume that you have an input stream class called pullStream and are using OPUS/OGG. Your code may look like this:

using Microsoft.CognitiveServices.Speech;
using Microsoft.CognitiveServices.Speech.Audio;

// ... omitted for brevity

var speechConfig =
    SpeechConfig.FromSubscription(
        "YourSubscriptionKey",
        "YourServiceRegion");

// Create an audio config specifying the compressed
// audio format and the instance of your input stream class.
var audioFormat =
    AudioStreamFormat.GetCompressedFormat(
        AudioStreamContainerFormat.OGG_OPUS);
var audioConfig =
    AudioConfig.FromStreamInput(
        pullStream,
        audioFormat);

using var recognizer = new SpeechRecognizer(speechConfig, audioConfig);
var result = await recognizer.RecognizeOnceAsync();

var text = result.Text;

To configure Speech SDK to accept compressed audio input, create PullAudioInputStream or PushAudioInputStream. Then, create an AudioConfig from an instance of your stream class, specifying the compression format of the stream. Find related sample code in Speech SDK samples.

Let's assume that you have an input stream class called pushStream and are using OPUS/OGG. Your code may look like this:

using namespace Microsoft::CognitiveServices::Speech;
using namespace Microsoft::CognitiveServices::Speech::Audio;

// ... omitted for brevity

 auto config =
    SpeechConfig::FromSubscription(
        "YourSubscriptionKey",
        "YourServiceRegion"
    );

auto audioFormat =
    AudioStreamFormat::GetCompressedFormat(
        AudioStreamContainerFormat::OGG_OPUS
    );
auto audioConfig =
    AudioConfig::FromStreamInput(
        pushStream,
        audioFormat
    );

auto recognizer = SpeechRecognizer::FromConfig(config, audioConfig);
auto result = recognizer->RecognizeOnceAsync().get();

auto text = result->Text;

To configure Speech SDK to accept compressed audio input, create a PullAudioInputStream or PushAudioInputStream. Then, create an AudioConfig from an instance of your stream class, specifying the compression format of the stream. Find related sample code in Speech SDK samples.

Let's assume that you have an input stream class called pullStream and are using OPUS/OGG. Your code may look like this:

import com.microsoft.cognitiveservices.speech.audio.AudioConfig;
import com.microsoft.cognitiveservices.speech.audio.AudioInputStream;
import com.microsoft.cognitiveservices.speech.audio.AudioStreamFormat;
import com.microsoft.cognitiveservices.speech.audio.PullAudioInputStream;
import com.microsoft.cognitiveservices.speech.audio.AudioStreamContainerFormat;

// ... omitted for brevity

SpeechConfig speechConfig =
    SpeechConfig.fromSubscription(
        "YourSubscriptionKey",
        "YourServiceRegion");

// Create an audio config specifying the compressed
// audio format and the instance of your input stream class.
AudioStreamFormat audioFormat = 
    AudioStreamFormat.getCompressedFormat(
        AudioStreamContainerFormat.OGG_OPUS);
AudioConfig audioConfig =
    AudioConfig.fromStreamInput(
        pullStream,
        audioFormat);

SpeechRecognizer recognizer = new SpeechRecognizer(speechConfig, audioConfig);
SpeechRecognitionResult result = recognizer.recognizeOnceAsync().get();

String text = result.getText();

To configure Speech SDK to accept compressed audio input, create PullAudioInputStream or PushAudioInputStream. Then, create an AudioConfig from an instance of your stream class, specifying the compression format of the stream.

Let's assume that your use case is to use PullStream for an MP3 file. Your code may look like this:

import azure.cognitiveservices.speech as speechsdk

class BinaryFileReaderCallback(speechsdk.audio.PullAudioInputStreamCallback):
    def __init__(self, filename: str):
        super().__init__()
        self._file_h = open(filename, "rb")

    def read(self, buffer: memoryview) -> int:
        print('trying to read {} frames'.format(buffer.nbytes))
        try:
            size = buffer.nbytes
            frames = self._file_h.read(size)

            buffer[:len(frames)] = frames
            print('read {} frames'.format(len(frames)))

            return len(frames)
        except Exception as ex:
            print('Exception in `read`: {}'.format(ex))
            raise

    def close(self) -> None:
        print('closing file')
        try:
            self._file_h.close()
        except Exception as ex:
            print('Exception in `close`: {}'.format(ex))
            raise

def compressed_stream_helper(compressed_format,
        mp3_file_path,
        default_speech_auth):
    callback = BinaryFileReaderCallback(mp3_file_path)
    stream = speechsdk.audio.PullAudioInputStream(stream_format=compressed_format, pull_stream_callback=callback)

    speech_config = speechsdk.SpeechConfig(**default_speech_auth)
    audio_config = speechsdk.audio.AudioConfig(stream=stream)

    speech_recognizer = speechsdk.SpeechRecognizer(speech_config=speech_config, audio_config=audio_config)

    done = False

    def stop_cb(evt):
        """callback that signals to stop continuous recognition upon receiving an event `evt`"""
        print('CLOSING on {}'.format(evt))
        nonlocal done
        done = True

    # Connect callbacks to the events fired by the speech recognizer
    speech_recognizer.recognizing.connect(lambda evt: print('RECOGNIZING: {}'.format(evt)))
    speech_recognizer.recognized.connect(lambda evt: print('RECOGNIZED: {}'.format(evt)))
    speech_recognizer.session_started.connect(lambda evt: print('SESSION STARTED: {}'.format(evt)))
    speech_recognizer.session_stopped.connect(lambda evt: print('SESSION STOPPED {}'.format(evt)))
    speech_recognizer.canceled.connect(lambda evt: print('CANCELED {}'.format(evt)))
    # stop continuous recognition on either session stopped or canceled events
    speech_recognizer.session_stopped.connect(stop_cb)
    speech_recognizer.canceled.connect(stop_cb)

    # Start continuous speech recognition
    speech_recognizer.start_continuous_recognition()
    while not done:
        time.sleep(.5)

    speech_recognizer.stop_continuous_recognition()
    # </SpeechContinuousRecognitionWithFile>

def pull_audio_input_stream_compressed_mp3(mp3_file_path: str,
        default_speech_auth):
    # Create a compressed format
    compressed_format = speechsdk.audio.AudioStreamFormat(compressed_stream_format=speechsdk.AudioStreamContainerFormat.MP3)
    compressed_stream_helper(compressed_format, mp3_file_path, default_speech_auth)

To configure the Speech SDK to accept compressed audio input, create a PullAudioInputStream or PushAudioInputStream. Then, create an AudioConfig from an instance of your stream class, specifying the compression format of the stream.

In the following example let's assume that your use case is to use PushStream for a compressed file.

package recognizer

import (
  "fmt"
  "time"
    "strings"

  "github.com/Microsoft/cognitive-services-speech-sdk-go/audio"
  "github.com/Microsoft/cognitive-services-speech-sdk-go/speech"
  "github.com/Microsoft/cognitive-services-speech-sdk-go/samples/helpers"
)

func RecognizeOnceFromCompressedFile(subscription string, region string, file string) {
  var containerFormat audio.AudioStreamContainerFormat
  if strings.Contains(file, ".mulaw") {
    containerFormat = audio.MULAW
  } else if strings.Contains(file, ".alaw") {
    containerFormat = audio.ALAW
  } else if strings.Contains(file, ".mp3") {
    containerFormat = audio.MP3
  } else if strings.Contains(file, ".flac") {
    containerFormat = audio.FLAC
  } else if strings.Contains(file, ".opus") {
    containerFormat = audio.OGGOPUS
  } else {
    containerFormat = audio.ANY
  }
  format, err := audio.GetCompressedFormat(containerFormat)
  if err != nil {
    fmt.Println("Got an error: ", err)
    return
  }
  defer format.Close()
  stream, err := audio.CreatePushAudioInputStreamFromFormat(format)
  if err != nil {
    fmt.Println("Got an error: ", err)
    return
  }
  defer stream.Close()
  audioConfig, err := audio.NewAudioConfigFromStreamInput(stream)
  if err != nil {
    fmt.Println("Got an error: ", err)
    return
  }
  defer audioConfig.Close()
  config, err := speech.NewSpeechConfigFromSubscription(subscription, region)
  if err != nil {
    fmt.Println("Got an error: ", err)
    return
  }
  defer config.Close()
  speechRecognizer, err := speech.NewSpeechRecognizerFromConfig(config, audioConfig)
  if err != nil {
    fmt.Println("Got an error: ", err)
    return
  }
  defer speechRecognizer.Close()
  speechRecognizer.SessionStarted(func(event speech.SessionEventArgs) {
    defer event.Close()
    fmt.Println("Session Started (ID=", event.SessionID, ")")
  })
  speechRecognizer.SessionStopped(func(event speech.SessionEventArgs) {
    defer event.Close()
    fmt.Println("Session Stopped (ID=", event.SessionID, ")")
  })
  helpers.PumpFileIntoStream(file, stream)
  task := speechRecognizer.RecognizeOnceAsync()
  var outcome speech.SpeechRecognitionOutcome
  select {
  case outcome = <-task:
  case <-time.After(40 * time.Second):
    fmt.Println("Timed out")
    return
  }
  defer outcome.Close()
  if outcome.Error != nil {
    fmt.Println("Got an error: ", outcome.Error)
  }
  fmt.Println("Got a recognition!")
  fmt.Println(outcome.Result.Text)
}