chunk — Audio Chunking

Splits a .wav file into smaller segments based on a YAML configuration defining time boundaries. Useful for pre-processing long recordings before running extract.

Note

Only .wav input files are supported. Output chunks are also .wav.

CLI

speech-mine chunk <audio.wav> <config.yaml> <output_dir/> [options]

Options

Flag	Default	Description
--fade-in MS	0	Fade in duration in milliseconds
--fade-out MS	0	Fade out duration in milliseconds
--padding MS	0	Silence padding added to both ends (ms)
--verbose	—	Print file sizes for each chunk

Examples

# Basic chunking
speech-mine chunk recording.wav config.yaml chunks/

# With fade effects and padding
speech-mine chunk recording.wav config.yaml chunks/ \
  --fade-in 500 \
  --fade-out 500 \
  --padding 100 \
  --verbose

Library

from speech_mine.pickaxe.chunk import chunk_audio_file, AudioChunker

# Convenience function
output_files = chunk_audio_file(
    audio_path="recording.wav",
    config_path="config.yaml",
    output_dir="chunks/",
    fade_in=500,
    fade_out=500,
    silence_padding=100,
)

# Or use the class directly
chunker = AudioChunker(fade_in_duration=500, fade_out_duration=500, silence_padding=100)
output_files = chunker.process_audio_file("recording.wav", "config.yaml", "chunks/")

YAML config format

See examples/example_chunk_config.yaml for a full example.

chunks:
  - start: 0.0
    end: 30.0
    name: "intro"        # optional — included in output filename
  - start: 30.0
    end: 120.0
    name: "discussion"
  - start: 120.0
    end: 300.0
    # no name — output will be "2.wav"

Output filenames follow the pattern {index}.{name}.wav or {index}.wav if no name is set. Chunks are sorted by start time before indexing.

Validation rules:

• start and end are required for every chunk
• end must be greater than start
• end cannot exceed the audio file duration
• Start times must be unique across chunks