Persistent FAVE-align errors

[Aurora Kane]

Hi everyone,

I am a first-time FAVE user trying to get FAVE-align to work on my computer (MacBook Pro, OS 10.10.1). I have done pretty much everything I can think of (and everything I've seen in messages on this board) to get it to work; however, whenever I try to align, I still get the following errors for every single chunk (speaker/file names and words redacted, sorry, I'm supposed to keep them private):

Processing [speaker name]  -- chunk 1:  [TEXT]

Sound chunk [filename]_chunk_1.wav successfully extracted.

  ERROR [+6251]  Only standard PCM, mu-law & a-law supported

  ERROR [+6213]  OpenWaveInput: Get[format]HeaderInfo failed

  ERROR [+6313]  OpenAsChannel: OpenWaveInput failed

  ERROR [+6316]  OpenBuffer: OpenAsChannel failed

  ERROR [+1050]  OpenParmFile: Config parameters invalid

 FATAL ERROR - Terminating program HCopy

  ERROR [+6310]  OpenParmChannel: cannot open Parm File ./tmp[filename]1/[filename]1.plp

  ERROR [+6313]  OpenAsChannel: OpenParmChannel failed

  ERROR [+6316]  OpenBuffer: OpenAsChannel failed

  ERROR [+3250]  ProcessFile: Config parameters invalid

 FATAL ERROR - Terminating program HVite

ERROR!  Alignment failed for chunk 1 (speaker [speaker name], text [TEXT].)

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "FAAValign.py", line 1608, in FAAValign

    align(os.path.join(tempdir, chunkname_sound), [text], os.path.join(tempdir, chunkname_textgrid), FADIR, SOXPATH, HTKTOOLSPATH)

  File "FAAValign.py", line 216, in align

    raise Exception, FA_error

Exception: Error in aligning file [filename]_chunk_1.wav:  list index out of range.

At the end, it produces a blank TextGrid that crashes Praat whenever I try to open it.

I know people have posted on here with similar/nearly identical errors before, and I've tried pretty much everything that worked for them to no avail. Here is a list of all of the things I have done to try to get this to work/understand the problem:

-Checked that sox (14.4.2) successfully downloaded ('which sox' returns the correct path and the right stuff appears when I call 'sox')

- Re-downloaded the command line tools that were right for my XCode (6.1.1) and my system (OS 10.10), re-downloaded HTK (3.4.1), fixed the labpr bug in the code, and re-made/re-installed (I've done that twice)

-Installed X11, that works as far as I know (no problems installing HTK)

-Tried 'which HVite' and 'which HCopy', both returned the right usr/local/bin thing

-Redownloaded the FAVE toolkit (twice) (I'm currently using FAVE 1.2.1, and I got the same errors with FAVE 1.2.3)

-Started from scratch and re-downloaded everything (htk, sox, and fave), following all of the instructions from the wiki to the letter

-Submitted a small test file unrelated to my work to the online interface of FAVE-align; it aligned fine, so I don't think my files are an issue

-Put the files that need aligning in the same directory as FAAValign.py

Given that it's HVite and HCopy that keep failing, I'm inclined to think it's an htk error, but htk seems to be properly installed. I don't really know how to interpret "list index out of range." Does anyone have any ideas for things that I could try?

Thanks everyone!

[Josef Fruehwald]

Hi Aurora,

Just to start ruling things out, you've installed HTK 3.4.1, not the new HTK 3.5 beta?

-Joe

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[Aurora Kane]

Yes, I am using 3.4.1.

[Keelan Evanini]

Hi Aurora,

The initial error provided by HTK is the following:

  ERROR [+6251]  Only standard PCM, mu-law & a-law supported

This seems to indicate that the format of the .wav input file is not consistent with the format that HTK is expecting.  You indicated that you submitted an audio file from a different project to the online FAVE-align interface with success--have you tried submitting this audio file to the online interface to see what happens?  If you're concerned about confidentiality, you could perhaps just extract a very short segment of the file for diagnostic purposes.

Another test you can do is to run the sox command on the audio file to obtain information about the audio file format--to do this, you can use the '--i' command-line argument to sox, for example:

$ sox --i 1-100faf2db.wav

Input File     : '1-100faf2db.wav'
Channels       : 1
Sample Rate    : 16000
Precision      : 16-bit
Duration       : 00:00:46.00 = 736000 samples ~ 3450 CDDA sectors
File Size      : 1.47M
Bit Rate       : 256k
Sample Encoding: 16-bit Signed Integer PCM

If the value for Sample Encoding is something other than "16-bit Signed Integer PCM" then there may be a problem with the audio file format and you may need to convert it prior to running FAVE-align.

HTH,

Keelan

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[Aurora Kane]

Thank you so much, Keelan! I checked and it turned out the files I had were all 24-bit wav. I converted them using sox and everything works now!

Thanks for the help,

Aurora