Getting started with Amazon Transcribe

Before you can create transcriptions, you have a few prerequisites:

Once you complete these prerequisites, you're ready to transcribe. Select your preferred transcription method from the following list to get started.

Because streaming using HTTP/2 and WebSockets is more complicated than the other transcription methods, we recommend reviewing the Setting up a streaming transcription section before getting started with these methods. Note that we strongly recommend using an SDK for streaming transcriptions.

Sign up for an AWS account

To get started with AWS, you need an AWS account. For information about creating an AWS account, see Getting started with an AWS account in the AWS Account Management Reference Guide.

Installing the AWS CLI and SDKs

To use the Amazon Transcribe API, you must first install the AWS CLI. The current AWS CLI is version 2. You can find installation instructions for Linux, Mac, Windows, and Docker in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.

Once you have the AWS CLI installed, you must configure it for your security credentials and AWS Region.

If you want to use Amazon Transcribe with an SDK, select your preferred language for installation instructions:

Creating an Amazon S3 bucket

Amazon S3 is a secure object storage service. Amazon S3 stores your files (called objects) in containers (called buckets).

To run a batch transcription, you must first upload your media files into an Amazon S3 bucket. If you don't specify an Amazon S3 bucket for your transcription output, Amazon Transcribe puts your transcript in a temporary AWS-managed Amazon S3 bucket. Transcription output in AWS-managed buckets is automatically deleted after 90 days.

Learn how to Create your first S3 bucket and Upload an object to your bucket.

Creating an IAM policy

To manage access in AWS, you must create policies and attach them to IAM identities (users, groups, or roles) or AWS resources. A policy defines the permissions of the entity it is attached to. For example, a role can only access a media file located in your Amazon S3 bucket if you've attached a policy to that role which grants it access. If you want to further restrict that role, you can instead limit its access to a specific file within an Amazon S3 bucket.

To learn more about using AWS policies see:

For example policies you can use with Amazon Transcribe, see Amazon Transcribe identity-based policy examples. If you want to generate custom policies, consider using the AWS Policy Generator.

You can add a policy using the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or AWS SDK. For instructions, see Adding and removing IAM identity permissions.

Policies have the format:

JSON

{
    "Version":"2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "my-policy-name",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "service:action"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "amazon-resource-name"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) uniquely identify all AWS resources, such as an Amazon S3 bucket. You can use ARNs in your policy to grant permissions for specific actions to use specific resources. For example, if you want to grant read access to an Amazon S3 bucket and its sub-folders, you can add the following code to your trust policy's Statement section:

{
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": [
            "s3:GetObject",
            "s3:ListBucket"
        ],
        "Resource": [
            "arn:aws:s3:::amzn-s3-demo-bucket",
            "arn:aws:s3:::amzn-s3-demo-bucket/*"
        ]
}

Here's an example policy that grants Amazon Transcribe read (GetObject, ListBucket) and write (PutObject) permissions to an Amazon S3 bucket, amzn-s3-demo-bucket, and its sub-folders:

JSON

{
  "Version":"2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:ListBucket"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::amzn-s3-demo-bucket",
                "arn:aws:s3:::amzn-s3-demo-bucket/*"
            ]
        },
        {
             "Effect": "Allow",
             "Action": [
                 "s3:PutObject"
             ],
             "Resource": [
                 "arn:aws:s3:::amzn-s3-demo-bucket",
                 "arn:aws:s3:::amzn-s3-demo-bucket/*"
             ]
        }
  ]
}