Arrè

A collection of Python scripts to download and transcribe recordings from the Radio Radicale archive.

Motivation

These scripts were written to facilitate a family project in the context of which we want to transcribe some of the arguments of my grandfather, lawyer Giuseppe Grillo (see status here). Many important trials were aired on Radio Radicale and are now part of its archive.

The Radio Radicale website, however, no longer allows downloading the relevant audio tracks and its responsibles have not answered our repeated requests to obtain the files at hand, forcing us to "record" the corresponding audio streams.

In addition, most recordings are at least one hour long, making it necessary for us to start from an automatic transcript (see Transcribing audio recordings).

Requirements

• Python 3.11 or 3.13 (other Python 3 versions might work too, but have not been tested)
• the mpv media player (necessary for the download step)

Setup

1. Clone this repository
2. install the Python dependencies listed in requirements.txt. Using a virtual environment is highly recommended

Usage

Downloading audio recordings from radioradicale.it

Move inside the arre folder and run

python download.py WEBPAGE_URLs

where WEBPAGE_URLs is a list of URLs of Radio Radicale pages containing an RTSP stream, such as this one.

This script will create one or more folders data/PAGE-TITLE containing the audio track(s) in question.

NOTE: the "download" process takes a long time since the program needs to actually reproduce and "record" the entire RSTP audio stream. However, this process is lightweight and does not require the volume to be turned up.

Transcribing audio recordings

To transcribe an audio file, run

python transcribe.py PATH_TO_AUDIO_FILE

The result will be an .srt file, which will be placed in the same folder as the source audio track.

NOTE: This step uses a (relatively) small OpenAIs Whispe model, more specifically stable-ts. The prompt can be configured by editing the whisper_prompt.txt file.

Namesake

The Sicilian word arrè, meaning "again", was chosen because:

• my grandfather is from Agrigento, Sicily
• the word itself reminds of the Italian word arringa (plea, argument), typical of the legal domain.