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`auditok` Command-line Usage Guide
==================================

This user guide will go through a few of the most useful operations you can use **auditok** for and present two practical use cases. 


.. contents:: `Contents`
   :depth: 3


**********************
Two-figure explanation
**********************

The following two figures illustrate an audio signal (blue) and regions detected as valid audio activities (green rectangles) according to a given threshold (red dashed line). They respectively depict the detection result when:

1. the detector tolerates phases of silence of up to 0.3 second (300 ms) within an audio activity (also referred to as acoustic event):

.. figure:: figures/figure_1.png
    :align: center
    :alt: Output from a detector that tolerates silence periods up to 300 ms
    :figclass: align-center
    :scale: 40 %

2. the detector splits an audio activity event into many activities if the within activity silence is over 0.2 second:

.. figure:: figures/figure_2.png
    :align: center
    :alt: Output from a detector that tolerates silence periods up to 200 ms
    :figclass: align-center
    :scale: 40 %


******************
Command line usage
******************

Try the detector with your voice
################################

The first thing you want to check is perhaps how `auditok` detects your voice. If you have installed `PyAudio` just run (`Ctrl-C` to stop):

.. code:: bash

    auditok

This will print **id** **start time** and **end time** for each detected activity. If you don't have `PyAudio`, you can use `sox` for data acquisition (`sudo apt-get install sox`) and tell `auditok` to read data from standard input:

    rec -q -t raw -r 16000 -c 1 -b 16 -e signed - | auditok -i - -r 16000 -w 2 -c 1
    
Note that when data is read from standard input the same audio parameters must be used for both `sox` (or any other data generation/acquisition tool) and `auditok`. The following table summarizes audio parameters.


+-----------------+------------+----------------+-----------------------+
| Audio parameter | sox option | auditok option | `auditok` default     |
+=================+============+================+=======================+
| Sampling rate   |     -r     |       -r       |      16000            |
+-----------------+------------+----------------+-----------------------+
| Sample width    |  -b (bits) |     -w (bytes) |      2                |
+-----------------+------------+----------------+-----------------------+
| Channels        |  -c        |     -c         |      1                |
+-----------------+------------+----------------+-----------------------+
| Encoding        |  -e        |     None       | always signed integer |
+-----------------+------------+----------------+-----------------------+

According to this table, the previous command can be run as:

.. code:: bash

    rec -q -t raw -r 16000 -c 1 -b 16 -e signed - | auditok -i -

Play back detections
####################

.. code:: bash

    auditok -E

OR

.. code:: bash

    rec -q -t raw -r 16000 -c 1 -b 16 -e signed - | auditok -i - -E

Option `-E` stands for echo, so `auditok` plays back whatever it detects. Using `-E` requires `PyAudio`, if you don't have `PyAudio` and want to play detections with sox, use the `-C` option:

.. code:: bash

    rec -q -t raw -r 16000 -c 1 -b 16 -e signed - | auditok -i - -C "play -q -t raw -r 16000 -c 1 -b 16 -e signed $"
    
The `-C` option tells `auditok` to interpret its content as a command that should be run whenever `auditok` detects an audio activity, replacing the `$` by a name of a temporary file into which the activity is saved as raw audio. Here we use `play` to play the activity, giving the necessary `play` arguments for raw data.

`rec` and `play` are just an alias for `sox`.

The `-C` option can be useful in many cases. Imagine a command that sends audio data over a network only if there is an audio activity and saves bandwidth during silence.

Set detection threshold
#######################

If you notice that there are too many detections, use a higher value for energy threshold (the current version only implements a `validator` based on energy threshold. The use of spectral information is also desirable and might be part of future releases). To change the energy threshold (default: 50), use option `-e`:

.. code:: bash

    auditok -E -e 55

OR

.. code:: bash

    rec -q -t raw -r 16000 -c 1 -b 16 -e signed - | auditok -i - -e 55 -C "play -q -t raw -r 16000 -c 1 -b 16 -e signed $"

If however you figure out that the detector is missing some of or all your audio activities, use a lower value for `-e`.

Set format for printed detections information
#############################################

By default, `auditok` prints the `id` `start time` `end time` of each detected activity:

.. code:: bash

    1 1.87 2.67
    2 3.05 3.73
    3 3.97 4.49
    ...
    
If you want to personalize the output format, use `--printf` option:

    auditok -e 55 --printf "[{id}]: {start} to {end}"

Output:

.. code:: bash

    [1]: 0.22 to 0.67
    [2]: 2.81 to 4.18
    [3]: 5.53 to 6.44
    [4]: 7.32 to 7.82
    ...

Keywords `{id}`, `{start}` and `{end}` can be placed and repeated anywhere in the text. Time is shown in seconds, if you want a more detailed time information, use `--time-format`:

    auditok -e 55 --printf "[{id}]: {start} to {end}" --time-format "%h:%m:%s.%i"
    
Output:

.. code:: bash

    [1]: 00:00:01.080 to 00:00:01.760
    [2]: 00:00:02.420 to 00:00:03.440
    [3]: 00:00:04.930 to 00:00:05.570
    [4]: 00:00:05.690 to 00:00:06.020
    [5]: 00:00:07.470 to 00:00:07.980
    ...

Valid time directives are: `%h` (hours) `%m` (minutes) `%s` (seconds) `%i` (milliseconds). Two other directives, `%S` (default) and `%I` can be used for absolute time in seconds and milliseconds respectively.

1st Practical use case example: generate a subtitles template
#############################################################

Using `--printf ` and `--time-format`, the following command, used with an input audio or video file, will generate and an **srt** file template that can be later edited with a subtitles editor in a way that reduces the time needed to define when each utterance starts and where it ends: 

.. code:: bash

    auditok -e 55 -i input.wav -m 10 --printf "{id}\n{start} --> {end}\nPut some text here...\n" --time-format "%h:%m:%s.%i"

Output:

.. code:: bash

    1
    00:00:00.730 --> 00:00:01.460
    Put some text here...
    
    2
    00:00:02.440 --> 00:00:03.900
    Put some text here...

    3
    00:00:06.410 --> 00:00:06.970
    Put some text here...

    4
    00:00:07.260 --> 00:00:08.340
    Put some text here...

    5
    00:00:09.510 --> 00:00:09.820
    Put some text here...


2nd Practical use case example: build a (very) basic voice control application
##############################################################################

`This repository <https://github.com/amsehili/gspeech-rec>`_ supplies a bash script the can send audio data to Google's
Speech Recognition service and get its transcription. In the following we will use **auditok** as a lower layer component
of a voice control application. The basic idea is to tell **auditok** to run, for each detected audio activity, a certain
number of commands that make up the rest of our voice control application.

Assume you have installed **sox** and downloaded the Speech Recognition script. The sequence of commands to run is:

1- Convert raw audio data to flac using **sox**:

.. code:: bash

    sox -t raw -r 16000 -c 1 -b 16 -e signed raw_input output.flac

2- Send falc audio to google and get its filtred transcription using `speech-rec.sh <https://github.com/amsehili/gspeech-rec/blob/master/speech-rec.sh>`_ :

.. code:: bash

    speech-rec.sh -i output.flac -r 16000
    
3- Use **grep** to select lines that coantain *transcript*:

.. code:: bash

    grep transcript


4- Launch the followin script, giving it the transcription as input:

.. code:: bash

    #!/bin/bash

    read line

    RES=`echo "$line" | grep -i "open firefox"`

    if [[ $RES ]]
       then
         echo "Launch command: 'firefox &' ... "
         firefox &
         exit 0
    fi

    exit 0

As you can see, the script can handle one single voice command. It runs firefox if the text it receives contains **run firefox**.
Save a script into a file named voice-control.sh (don't forget to run a **chmod u+x voice-control.sh**).

Now, thanks to option `-C`, we will use the three instructions with a pipe and tell auditok to run them for every time it detects
an audio activity. Try the following command and say *open firefox*:


.. code:: bash

    rec -q -t raw -r 16000 -c 1 -b 16 -e signed - | auditok -M 5 -m 3 -n 1 --debug-file log -e 60 -C "sox -t raw -r 16000 -c 1 -b 16 -e signed $ audio.flac ; speech-rec.sh -i audio.flac -r 16000 | grep transcript | ./voice-control.sh"




Plot signal and detections
##########################

use option `-p`. Requires `matplotlib` and `numpy`.

.. code:: bash

    auditok ...  -p


Save plot as image or PDF
#########################

.. code:: bash

    auditok ...  --save-image output.png

Requires `matplotlib` and `numpy`. Accepted formats: eps, jpeg, jpg, pdf, pgf, png, ps, raw, rgba, svg, svgz, tif, tiff.


Read data from file
###################

.. code:: bash

    auditok -i input.wav ...

Install `pydub` for other audio formats.


Limit the length of acquired data
#################################

.. code:: bash

    auditok -M 12 ...

Time is in seconds.


Save the whole acquired audio signal
####################################

.. code:: bash

    auditok -O output.wav ...

Install `pydub` for other audio formats.


Save each detection into a separate audio file
##############################################

.. code:: bash

    auditok -o det_{N}_{start}_{end}.wav ...

You can use a free text and place `{N}`, `{start}` and `{end}` wherever you want, they will be replaced by detection number, start time and end time respectively. Another example:

.. code:: bash

    auditok -o {start}-{end}.wav ...
    
Install `pydub` for more audio formats.


Setting detection parameters
############################

Alongside the threshold option `-e` seen so far, a couple of other options can have a great impact on the detector behavior. These options are summarized in the following table:

+--------+-------------------------------------------------------+---------+------------------+
| Option | Description                                           | Unit    | Default          |
+========+=======================================================+=========+==================+
| `-n`   | Minimum length an accepted audio activity should have | second  |   0.2 (200 ms)   |
+--------+-------------------------------------------------------+---------+------------------+
| `-m`   | Maximum length an accepted audio activity should reach| second  |   5.             |
+--------+-------------------------------------------------------+---------+------------------+
| `-s`   | Maximum length of a continuous silence period within  | second  |   0.3 (300 ms)   |
|        | an accepted audio activity                            |         |                  |
+--------+-------------------------------------------------------+---------+------------------+
| `-d`   | Drop trailing silence from an accepted audio activity | boolean |   False          |
+--------+-------------------------------------------------------+---------+------------------+
| `-a`   | Analysis window length (default value should be good) | second  |   0.01 (10 ms)   |
+--------+-------------------------------------------------------+---------+------------------+


*******
License
*******

`auditok` is published under the GNU General Public License Version 3.

******
Author
******
Amine Sehili (<[e-mail]>)