Pinch Pinch

Troubleshooting

Real-time translation

GET /v1/session returns 401 or 403

  • 401 — missing or invalid API key. Check the Authorization: Bearer … header and confirm the key in the Developer Portal.
  • 403 — the key is valid but isn’t entitled to real-time translation. Reach out to support@startpinch.com.

GET /v1/session returns 503

Capacity is temporarily exhausted. Retry with a short backoff (e.g. 1 s, then 2 s). If you see this persistently, let us know at support@startpinch.com so we can provision more capacity.

WebSocket closes with code 4401

The pre-signed ws_url token has expired. Tokens are valid for 60 seconds after GET /v1/session; open the socket promptly. On 4401, reallocate a new session.

WebSocket closes with code 4503

The session ended on the server side. Reallocate a new session via GET /v1/session.

I sent audio but never got ready

ready is the first frame from the server. Don’t send audio before it arrives. If ready never arrives, the ws_url may have expired — reallocate.

No transcripts coming back

  • Check you’re sending PCM16 little-endian, mono, 16 kHz on the binary channel.
  • Check frames aren’t empty or silence-only — VAD needs some voiced audio to kick off ASR.
  • Check the sourceLanguage is actually the language being spoken.

Last sentence doesn’t finalise (push-to-talk)

If you stop sending audio the instant the user releases a key, the server never sees enough trailing silence to finalise the segment. Send ~300 ms of silence (PCM16 zeros) after the user releases push-to-talk.

Translated audio sounds garbled or slowed

Usually the same root cause as “last sentence doesn’t finalise” — segments stuck in a continuation state get rendered at a slower rate. Send the 300 ms of trailing silence described above.

error frame — targetLanguage='xx' is not supported

The target language you requested isn’t in the speech output set. Either pick a supported output language (see Supported languages) or pass audioOutputEnabled=false to get transcripts only.

error frame — voiceType='clone' is not supported yet

clone is not available on the real-time API. Use male or female.

Dubbing

Job stuck in processing

Dubbing jobs scale with audio duration. A 1-hour file typically finishes in under 15 minutes; longer waits usually mean the upstream media couldn’t be fetched. Check the job’s error field and confirm the source_url is publicly reachable.

400 from POST /api/dubbing/jobs

Most commonly: source_url can’t be fetched, unsupported media container, or the source language isn’t supported. The response body names the specific field.

Still stuck?

Email support@startpinch.com with your session_id (for real-time) or job ID (for dubbing) and a short description of what you’re seeing.