I need to capture audio clips as WAV files that I can then pass to another bit of python for processing. The problem is that I need to determine when there is audio present and then record it, stop when it goes silent and then pass that file to the processing module.
I'm thinking it should be possible with the wave module to detect when there is pure silence and discard it then as soon as something other than silence is detected start recording, then when the line goes silent again stop the recording.
Just can't quite get my head around it, can anyone get me started with a basic example.
As a follow up to Nick Fortescue's answer, here's a more complete example of how to record from the microphone and process the resulting data:
from sys import byteorder
from array import array
from struct import pack
import pyaudio
import wave
THRESHOLD = 500
CHUNK_SIZE = 1024
FORMAT = pyaudio.paInt16
RATE = 44100
def is_silent(snd_data):
"Returns 'True' if below the 'silent' threshold"
return max(snd_data) < THRESHOLD
def normalize(snd_data):
"Average the volume out"
MAXIMUM = 16384
times = float(MAXIMUM)/max(abs(i) for i in snd_data)
r = array('h')
for i in snd_data:
r.append(int(i*times))
return r
def trim(snd_data):
"Trim the blank spots at the start and end"
def _trim(snd_data):
snd_started = False
r = array('h')
for i in snd_data:
if not snd_started and abs(i)>THRESHOLD:
snd_started = True
r.append(i)
elif snd_started:
r.append(i)
return r
# Trim to the left
snd_data = _trim(snd_data)
# Trim to the right
snd_data.reverse()
snd_data = _trim(snd_data)
snd_data.reverse()
return snd_data
def add_silence(snd_data, seconds):
"Add silence to the start and end of 'snd_data' of length 'seconds' (float)"
silence = [0] * int(seconds * RATE)
r = array('h', silence)
r.extend(snd_data)
r.extend(silence)
return r
def record():
"""
Record a word or words from the microphone and
return the data as an array of signed shorts.
Normalizes the audio, trims silence from the
start and end, and pads with 0.5 seconds of
blank sound to make sure VLC et al can play
it without getting chopped off.
"""
p = pyaudio.PyAudio()
stream = p.open(format=FORMAT, channels=1, rate=RATE,
input=True, output=True,
frames_per_buffer=CHUNK_SIZE)
num_silent = 0
snd_started = False
r = array('h')
while 1:
# little endian, signed short
snd_data = array('h', stream.read(CHUNK_SIZE))
if byteorder == 'big':
snd_data.byteswap()
r.extend(snd_data)
silent = is_silent(snd_data)
if silent and snd_started:
num_silent += 1
elif not silent and not snd_started:
snd_started = True
if snd_started and num_silent > 30:
break
sample_width = p.get_sample_size(FORMAT)
stream.stop_stream()
stream.close()
p.terminate()
r = normalize(r)
r = trim(r)
r = add_silence(r, 0.5)
return sample_width, r
def record_to_file(path):
"Records from the microphone and outputs the resulting data to 'path'"
sample_width, data = record()
data = pack('<' + ('h'*len(data)), *data)
wf = wave.open(path, 'wb')
wf.setnchannels(1)
wf.setsampwidth(sample_width)
wf.setframerate(RATE)
wf.writeframes(data)
wf.close()
if __name__ == '__main__':
print("please speak a word into the microphone")
record_to_file('demo.wav')
print("done - result written to demo.wav")