These samples show how to use the Google Cloud Speech API to transcribe audio files, using the REST-based Google API Client Library for Python.

For samples that use the more-efficient GRPC-based client library (including a streaming sample that transcribes audio streamed from your microphone), see ../grpc/.

If you have not already done so, enable the Google Cloud Speech API for your project.

These samples use service accounts for authentication.

• Visit the Cloud Console, and navigate to:

  API Manager > Credentials > Create credentials > Service account key > New service account.

• Create a new service account, and download the json credentials file.

• Set the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable to point to your downloaded service account credentials:

  export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/path/to/your/credentials-key.json
  

  If you do not do this, the REST api will return a 403.

See the Cloud Platform Auth Guide for more information.

• Clone this repo

  git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/python-docs-samples.git
  cd python-docs-samples/speech/api-client

• Create a virtualenv. This isolates the python dependencies you're about to install, to minimize conflicts with any existing libraries you might already have.

  virtualenv env
  source env/bin/activate

• Install the dependencies

  pip install -r requirements.txt

Each of the samples takes the audio file to transcribe as the first argument. For example:

python transcribe.py resources/audio.raw

You should see a response with the transcription result.

When you're done running the sample, you can exit your virtualenv:

deactivate