Error messages

Learn how to resolve some errors raised by Speech-to-Text. This topic discusses errors whose resolutions require more steps than can be easily described in an error message.

"The Application Default Credentials are not available"

If you receive this message:

The Application Default Credentials are not available. They are
available if running in Google Compute Engine. Otherwise, the
environment variable GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS must be defined
pointing to a file defining the credentials.
See https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/application-default-credentials
for more information.

Speech-to-Text uses Application Default Credentials (ADC) for authentication.

The credentials for ADC must be available within the context that you call the Speech-to-Text API. For example, if you set up ADC in your terminal but run your code in the debugger of your IDE, the execution context of your code might not have access to the credentials. In that case, your request to Speech-to-Text might fail.

To learn how to provide credentials to ADC, see Set up Application Default Credentials.

"File ... (pointed by GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable) does not exist!"

If you receive this message:

ERROR: (gcloud.auth.application-default.print-access-token) File /path/to/key.json
(pointed by GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable) does not exist!
{
  "error": {
    "code": 403,
    "message": "The request is missing a valid API key.",
    "status": "PERMISSION_DENIED"
  }
}

Verify that you have a valid service account key JSON file in the location stored in the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable and that the variable points to the correct place.

To diagnose this error, try opening the service account key file from the folder from which you're attempting to call the Speech-to-Text API.

cat $GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS

Forbidden: 403 POST API has not been used or is disabled

If you receive the message: 

Forbidden: 403 POST Speech-to-Text API has not been used in
project # before or it is disabled.
Enable it by visitng [url] then retry.
If you enabled this API recently, wait a few minutes for the action to
propagate to our systems and retry.

  1. Visit the link specified in the error message and enable the Speech-to-Text API. Wait several minutes and then retry.
  2. Verify that you have a valid service account key JSON file stored in the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable. To diagnose this error, try opening the service account key file from the folder from which you're attempting to call the Speech-to-Text API. 
    cat $GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS

"Must use single channel (mono) audio"

If you receive this message:

Must use single channel (mono) audio, but WAV header indicates 2
channels.

Your audio file contains more than one channel. To transcribe this audio file, you must declare that your audio has multiple channels.

"Must use 16 bit samples for LINEAR_PCM"

If you receive this message:

INVALID_ARGUMENT: Must use 16 bit samples for LINEAR_PCM, but the WAV
header indicates 8 bits per sample

You might need to change the encoding that you've specified in your RecognitionConfig. To read about supported encodings in Speech-to-Text, see the encodings guide.

"Sync input too long"

If you receive this message:

Sync input too long. For audio longer than 1 min use
LongRunningRecognize with a 'uri' parameter.

The synchronous recognize method for Speech-to-Text only supports transcribing audio data up to 1 minute in length. For longer audio data, use asynchronous recognize instead.

"Invalid recognition 'config': bad encoding"

If you receive this message:

Invalid recognition 'config': bad encoding.

Your audio data might not be encoded correctly or is encoded with a codec different than what you've declared in the RecognitionConfig. Check the audio input and make sure that you've set the encoding field correctly.

"Request payload size exceeds the limit"

If you receive either of these messages:

Request payload size exceeds the limit.

Inline audio exceeds duration limit. Please use a GCS URI.

You have exceeded the 10 MB size limit for a single request sent to the API using a local file. You can move your audio file to a Google Cloud Storage (GCS) bucket to avoid the 10 MB limit. See the quotas & limits page for more information.

"Quota exceeded"

If you receive this message:

RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED: Quota exceeded.

You have reached the limit of your per-minute or daily quota. Review the quotas & limits for using Speech-to-Text.

You can request an increase to your quotas from the Google Cloud console.