Migrating from Google Cloud Speech to Text

Last Updated: February 12, 2025 Migrating from GCP Transcription (Google Cloud Speech to Text) to Salad Transcription API will require you to replace your GCP Python functions with Salad compatible ones. Whilst we do not offer an SDK, we do have example Python functions that you can use in replacement.

Features	SaladCloud Transcription	GCP Transcription
Translation	✅	❌
Audio Transcription	✅	✅
Video Transcription	✅	❌
Multilingual Transcription	✅	✅
Summarization	✅	❌
Speaker Identification	✅	❌
SRT Output	✅	❌
Transcribe Multiple Files	❌	❌
Max Length	2.5 Hours	8 Hours
Text Sentiment Analysis	✅	❌
Text Classification	✅	❌
Custom LLM Prompt	✅	❌
Custom Vocabulary	✅	❌

1. Get your Salad API Key.

Open up https://portal.salad.com and sign up/log into your account.
Navigate to your profile at the top right, and select API Access. Here you can find your API Key.

2. Updating job creation API calls.

The Salad Transcription API uses a Job Queue system for processing transcription requests, rather than a Python function that returns the data like GCP. With Salad Transcription API, you’ll use two steps. Submit the job, and then request the results.

GCP Transcription (Google Cloud Speech to Text)

Your existing Python code for GCP Transcription (Google Cloud Speech to Text) should look something like this:

import os

from google.cloud.speech_v2 import SpeechClient
from google.cloud.speech_v2.types import cloud_speech

PROJECT_ID = os.getenv("GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT")


audio_uri = "gs://transcription-files/file.mp3"
def transcribe_batch_gcs_input_inline_output_v2(
    audio_uri: str,
) -> cloud_speech.BatchRecognizeResults:
    """Transcribes audio from a Google Cloud Storage URI using the Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API.
        The transcription results are returned inline in the response.
    Args:
        audio_uri (str): The Google Cloud Storage URI of the input audio file.
            E.g., gs://[BUCKET]/[FILE]
    Returns:
        cloud_speech.BatchRecognizeResults: The response containing the transcription results.
    """
    # Instantiates a client
    client = SpeechClient()

    config = cloud_speech.RecognitionConfig(
        auto_decoding_config=cloud_speech.AutoDetectDecodingConfig(),
        language_codes=["en-US"],
        model="long",
    )

    file_metadata = cloud_speech.BatchRecognizeFileMetadata(uri=audio_uri)

    request = cloud_speech.BatchRecognizeRequest(
        recognizer=f"projects/projectid/locations/global/recognizers/_",
        config=config,
        files=[file_metadata],
        recognition_output_config=cloud_speech.RecognitionOutputConfig(
            inline_response_config=cloud_speech.InlineOutputConfig(),
        ),
    )

    # Transcribes the audio into text
    operation = client.batch_recognize(request=request)

    print("Waiting for operation to complete...")
    response = operation.result(timeout=1200)
    print(response)
    for result in response.results[audio_uri].transcript.results:
        print(f"Transcript: {result.alternatives[0].transcript}")

    return response.results[audio_uri].transcript

print(transcribe_batch_gcs_input_inline_output_v2(audio_uri))

Salad Transcription API Equivalent

When using Salad Transcription API, you’ll update that job creation function to instead look like this:

import requests

def salad_transcribe(file, Salad-Api-Key):

    url = "https://api.salad.com/api/public/organizations/{organization_name}/inference-endpoints/transcribe/jobs"

    payload = {
        "input": {
       	    "url": file,
       	    "language_code": "en",
       	    "return_as_file": true,
       	    "word_level_timestamps": true
        }
    }
    headers = {
        "Salad-Api-Key": Salad-Api-Key,
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
    }

    response = requests.request("POST", url, json=payload, headers=headers)
    return response

Salad-Api-Key = "{Salad-Api-Key}"

file = "https://example.com/path/to/file.mp3"

job = salad_transcribe(file)
print(job.text)

For this code snippet, you’ll need to insert your Salad Organization name into the API url field.
You will also need to insert your Salad API Key we obtained earlier lower down in the code snippet.
Put the URL to the file to be transcribed into the file string. Please note that Salad Transcription API can only process files up to 2.5 hours. Make sure the URL provided is to a direct download of the file. Header based security is not compatible with Salad Transcription API, so you’ll need to use a signed URL like that offered by Salad Simple Storage Service.

The response will look like this:

{
  "id": "123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174000",
  "inference_endpoint_name": "transcribe",
  "input": {
    "property1": "value1",
    "property2": "value2"
  },
  "metadata": null,
  "organization_name": "example-corp",
  "status": "pending",
  "events": [],
  "create_time": "2025-01-016T19:00:00Z",
  "update_time": "2025-01-016T19:00:00Z"
}

3. Obtaining job results

In the response from submitting your job with the above step, you’ll receive the Job ID which is required to obtain the results of your transcription. The Job status and transcription results are combined into a single API call. With this Python function, you’ll check the status, and once the job is completed it will also retrieve the transcription results.

def get_result(job_id, Salad-Api-Key):
    url = "https://api.salad.com/api/public/organizations/{organization_name}/inference-endpoints/transcribe/jobs/" + job_id

    headers = {"Salad-Api-Key": Salad-Api-Key}

    response = requests.request("GET", url, headers=headers)

    return response

job_id = "{JOB_ID FROM BEFORE}"

Salad-Api-Key = "{Salad-Api-Key}"

result = get_result(job_id, Salad-Api-Key)
print(result.text)

Make sure to again update the organization name above to your organization name.
You will need to insert the Job ID that you obtained from the previous step as well.
And again make sure to include your Salad API Key.

Once the status of your job has reached succeeded, the output object will include the URL to the completed transcription via a directly downloadable URL.

{
  "id": "7c425fc0-dd3d-4c6c-8b6a-a010187492dd",
  "input": {
    "url": "https://example.com/path/to/file.mp3",
    "language_code": "en",
    "return_as_file": true,
    "word_level_timestamps": true
  },
  "inference_endpoint_name": "transcribe",
  "status": "succeeded",
  "events": [
    {
      "action": "created",
      "time": "2025-01-22T15:57:26.0815348+00:00"
    },
    {
      "action": "started",
      "time": "2025-01-22T15:57:26.2061428+00:00"
    },
    {
      "action": "succeeded",
      "time": "2025-01-22T15:58:13.9323189+00:00"
    }
  ],
  "organization_name": "salad",
  "output": {
    "url": "https://storage-api.salad.com/organizations/salad/files/transcription/73b2ee75-664e-4332-a853-9210dde5c5fd?token=ac34664a-088d-4c72-b53c-c99cfbf538",
    "duration_in_seconds": 320.4135,
    "duration": 0.09,
    "processing_time": 46.076966285705566
  },
  "create_time": "2025-01-22T15:57:26.0815348+00:00",
  "update_time": "2025-01-22T15:58:13.9323189+00:00"
}

Documentation Index

​1. Get your Salad API Key.

​2. Updating job creation API calls.

​GCP Transcription (Google Cloud Speech to Text)

​Salad Transcription API Equivalent

​3. Obtaining job results

1. Get your Salad API Key.

2. Updating job creation API calls.

GCP Transcription (Google Cloud Speech to Text)

Salad Transcription API Equivalent

3. Obtaining job results