Sphinx4: WavFile demo NullPointerException

[Tom Welfare]

Hi,

I'm new to Sphinx, and wish to transcript news podcasts into speech. I have been trying to adapt the WavFile demo in order to use the WSJ instead of recognising digits.

Thus far I have managed to get the demos running without problem, and have progressed on to trying to get the WavFile demo to work.

The steps I have taken so far are to:
Change config.xml to the configuration file used for HelloNGram
Include a copy of HelloNGram.trigram.lm in the WavFile jar
Edit the manifest to add the WSJ jar instead of tidigits
Change the original file 12345.wav to the audio sample I wish to transcribe, keeping the name the same.
Increasing the java heap size on run which prevents out of memory errors.

I still have a problem which persists, and seems to occur after having tried a few approaches, and was wondering if anyone might have any recommendations?

java -mx1024m -jar bin/WavFile.jar
Loading Recognizer as defined in 'jar:file:/C:/sphinx4-1.0beta2/bin/WavFile.jar!/edu/cmu/sphinx/demo/wavfile/config.xml'...

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
at edu.cmu.sphinx.demo.wavfile.WavFile.main(WavFile.java:50)

Any help would be greatly appreciated. A copy of config.xml is below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!--
Sphinx-4 Configuration file
-->

<!-- ******** -->
<!-- biship configuration file -->
<!-- ******** -->

<config>
<!-- ******** -->
<!-- frequently tuned properties -->
<!-- ******** -->
<property name="absoluteBeamWidth" value="5000"/>
<property name="relativeBeamWidth" value="1E-120"/>
<property name="absoluteWordBeamWidth" value="200"/>
<property name="relativeWordBeamWidth" value="1E-80"/>
<property name="wordInsertionProbability" value="0.7"/>
<property name="languageWeight" value="10.5"/>
<property name="silenceInsertionProbability" value=".1"/>
<property name="frontend" value="epFrontEnd"/>
<property name="recognizer" value="recognizer"/>
<property name="showCreations" value="false"/>

<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<!-- word recognizer configuration                            -->
<!-- ******************************************************** -->

<component name="recognizer" 
                      type="edu.cmu.sphinx.recognizer.Recognizer">
    <property name="decoder" value="decoder"/>
    <propertylist name="monitors">
        <item>accuracyTracker </item>
        <item>speedTracker </item>
        <item>memoryTracker </item>
    </propertylist>
</component>

<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<!-- The Decoder   configuration                              -->
<!-- ******************************************************** -->

<component name="decoder" type="edu.cmu.sphinx.decoder.Decoder">
    <property name="searchManager" value="wordPruningSearchManager"/>
    <property name="featureBlockSize" value="50"/>
</component>

<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<!-- The Search Manager                                       -->
<!-- ******************************************************** -->

<component name="wordPruningSearchManager" 
type="edu.cmu.sphinx.decoder.search.WordPruningBreadthFirstSearchManager">
    <property name="logMath" value="logMath"/>
    <property name="linguist" value="lexTreeLinguist"/>
    <property name="pruner" value="trivialPruner"/>
    <property name="scorer" value="threadedScorer"/>
    <property name="activeListManager" value="activeListManager"/>
    <property name="growSkipInterval" value="0"/>
    <property name="checkStateOrder" value="false"/>
    <property name="buildWordLattice" value="false"/>
    <property name="acousticLookaheadFrames" value="1.7"/>
    <property name="relativeBeamWidth" value="${relativeBeamWidth}"/>
</component>


<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<!-- The Active Lists                                         -->
<!-- ******************************************************** -->

<component name="activeListManager" 
         type="edu.cmu.sphinx.decoder.search.SimpleActiveListManager">
    <propertylist name="activeListFactories">
    <item>standardActiveListFactory</item>
    <item>wordActiveListFactory</item>
    <item>wordActiveListFactory</item>
    <item>standardActiveListFactory</item>
    <item>standardActiveListFactory</item>
    <item>standardActiveListFactory</item>
</propertylist>
</component>

<component name="standardActiveListFactory" 
         type="edu.cmu.sphinx.decoder.search.PartitionActiveListFactory">
    <property name="logMath" value="logMath"/>
    <property name="absoluteBeamWidth" value="${absoluteBeamWidth}"/>
    <property name="relativeBeamWidth" value="${relativeBeamWidth}"/>
</component>

<component name="wordActiveListFactory" 
         type="edu.cmu.sphinx.decoder.search.PartitionActiveListFactory">
    <property name="logMath" value="logMath"/>
    <property name="absoluteBeamWidth" value="${absoluteWordBeamWidth}"/>
    <property name="relativeBeamWidth" value="${relativeWordBeamWidth}"/>
</component>

<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<!-- The Pruner                                               -->
<!-- ******************************************************** --> 
<component name="trivialPruner" 
            type="edu.cmu.sphinx.decoder.pruner.SimplePruner"/>

<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<!-- TheScorer                                                -->
<!-- ******************************************************** --> 
<component name="threadedScorer" 
            type="edu.cmu.sphinx.decoder.scorer.ThreadedAcousticScorer">
    <property name="frontend" value="${frontend}"/>
</component>

<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<!-- The linguist  configuration                              -->
<!-- ******************************************************** -->

<component name="lexTreeLinguist" 
            type="edu.cmu.sphinx.linguist.lextree.LexTreeLinguist">
    <property name="logMath" value="logMath"/>
    <property name="acousticModel" value="wsj"/>
    <property name="languageModel" value="trigramModel"/>
    <property name="dictionary" value="dictionary"/>
    <property name="addFillerWords" value="false"/>
    <property name="fillerInsertionProbability" value="1E-10"/>
    <property name="generateUnitStates" value="false"/>
    <property name="wantUnigramSmear" value="true"/>
    <property name="unigramSmearWeight" value="1"/>
    <property name="wordInsertionProbability" 
            value="${wordInsertionProbability}"/>
    <property name="silenceInsertionProbability" 
            value="${silenceInsertionProbability}"/>
    <property name="languageWeight" value="${languageWeight}"/>
    <property name="unitManager" value="unitManager"/>
</component>


<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<!-- The Dictionary configuration                            -->
<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<component name="dictionary" 
    type="edu.cmu.sphinx.linguist.dictionary.FastDictionary">
    <property name="dictionaryPath"
              value="resource:/edu.cmu.sphinx.model.acoustic.WSJ_8gau_13dCep_16k_40mel_130Hz_6800Hz.Model!/edu/cmu/sphinx/model/acoustic/WSJ_8gau_13dCep_16k_40mel_130Hz_6800Hz/dict/cmudict.0.6d"/>
    <property name="fillerPath" 
          value="resource:/edu.cmu.sphinx.model.acoustic.WSJ_8gau_13dCep_16k_40mel_130Hz_6800Hz.Model!/edu/cmu/sphinx/model/acoustic/WSJ_8gau_13dCep_16k_40mel_130Hz_6800Hz/dict/fillerdict"/>
    <property name="addSilEndingPronunciation" value="false"/>
    <property name="wordReplacement" value="<sil>"/>
    <property name="unitManager" value="unitManager"/>
</component>


<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<!-- The Language Model configuration                         -->
<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<component name="trigramModel" 
    type="edu.cmu.sphinx.linguist.language.ngram.SimpleNGramModel">
    <property name="location" 
        value="resource:/edu.cmu.sphinx.demo.wavfile.WavFile!/edu/cmu/sphinx/demo/wavfile/hellongram.trigram.lm"/>
    <property name="logMath" value="logMath"/>
    <property name="dictionary" value="dictionary"/>
    <property name="maxDepth" value="3"/>
    <property name="unigramWeight" value=".7"/>
</component>


<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<!-- The acoustic model configuration                         -->
<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<component name="wsj"
           type="edu.cmu.sphinx.model.acoustic.WSJ_8gau_13dCep_16k_40mel_130Hz_6800Hz.Model">
    <property name="loader" value="wsjLoader"/>
    <property name="unitManager" value="unitManager"/>
</component>

<component name="wsjLoader" type="edu.cmu.sphinx.model.acoustic.WSJ_8gau_13dCep_16k_40mel_130Hz_6800Hz.ModelLoader">
    <property name="logMath" value="logMath"/>
    <property name="unitManager" value="unitManager"/>
</component>

<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<!-- The unit manager configuration                           -->
<!-- ******************************************************** -->

<component name="unitManager" 
    type="edu.cmu.sphinx.linguist.acoustic.UnitManager"/>


<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<!-- The frontend configuration                               -->
<!-- ******************************************************** -->

<component name="mfcFrontEnd" type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.FrontEnd">
    <propertylist name="pipeline">
        <item>microphone </item>
        <item>premphasizer </item>
        <item>windower </item>
        <item>fft </item>
        <item>melFilterBank </item>
        <item>dct </item>
        <item>liveCMN </item>
        <item>featureExtraction </item>
    </propertylist>
</component>

<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<!-- The live frontend configuration                          -->
<!-- ******************************************************** -->
<component name="epFrontEnd" type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.FrontEnd">
    <propertylist name="pipeline">
        <item>microphone </item>
        <item>dataBlocker </item>
        <item>speechClassifier </item>
        <item>speechMarker </item>
        <item>nonSpeechDataFilter </item>
        <item>premphasizer </item>
        <item>windower </item>
        <item>fft </item>
        <item>melFilterBank </item>
        <item>dct </item>
        <item>liveCMN </item>
        <item>featureExtraction </item>
    </propertylist>
</component>

<component name="microphone" 
            type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.util.Microphone">
    <property name="closeBetweenUtterances" value="false"/>
</component>

<component name="dataBlocker" type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.DataBlocker"/>

<component name="speechClassifier"
            type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.endpoint.SpeechClassifier">
    <property name="threshold" value="13"/>
</component>

<component name="nonSpeechDataFilter" 
            type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.endpoint.NonSpeechDataFilter"/>

<component name="speechMarker" 
            type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.endpoint.SpeechMarker">
    <property name="speechTrailer" value="50"/>
</component>

<component name="premphasizer" 
    type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.filter.Preemphasizer"/>

<component name="windower" 
type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.window.RaisedCosineWindower"/>

<component name="fft" 
    type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.transform.DiscreteFourierTransform"/>

<component name="melFilterBank" 
    type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.frequencywarp.MelFrequencyFilterBank"/>

<component name="dct" 
        type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.transform.DiscreteCosineTransform"/>

<component name="liveCMN" 
            type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.feature.LiveCMN"/>

<component name="featureExtraction" 
    type="edu.cmu.sphinx.frontend.feature.DeltasFeatureExtractor"/>

<!-- ******************************************************* -->
<!--  monitors                                               -->
<!-- ******************************************************* -->

<component name="accuracyTracker" 
            type="edu.cmu.sphinx.instrumentation.BestPathAccuracyTracker">
    <property name="recognizer" value="${recognizer}"/>
    <property name="showRawResults" value="false"/>
    <property name="showAlignedResults" value="false"/>
</component>

<component name="memoryTracker" 
            type="edu.cmu.sphinx.instrumentation.MemoryTracker">
    <property name="recognizer" value="${recognizer}"/>
<property name="showDetails" value="false"/>
<property name="showSummary" value="false"/>
</component>

<component name="speedTracker" 
            type="edu.cmu.sphinx.instrumentation.SpeedTracker">
    <property name="recognizer" value="${recognizer}"/>
    <property name="frontend" value="${frontend}"/>
<property name="showDetails" value="false"/>
</component>

<component name="recognizerMonitor" 
            type="edu.cmu.sphinx.instrumentation.RecognizerMonitor">
    <property name="recognizer" value="${recognizer}"/>
    <propertylist name="allocatedMonitors">
        <item>configMonitor </item>
    </propertylist>
</component>

<component name="configMonitor" 
            type="edu.cmu.sphinx.instrumentation.ConfigMonitor">
    <property name="showConfig" value="false"/>
</component>



<!-- ******************************************************* -->
<!--  Miscellaneous components                               -->
<!-- ******************************************************* -->

<component name="logMath" type="edu.cmu.sphinx.util.LogMath">
    <property name="logBase" value="1.0001"/>
    <property name="useAddTable" value="true"/>
</component>

</config>

Thank you for your time,
Tom

[Nickolay V. Shmyrev]

> was wondering if anyone might have any recommendations?

Search the forum before asking?

Your problem is that you don't include WSJ jar into classpath.