Common Voice Toolbox - Split Maker

A collection of scripts to create alternative splits, to check important measures in multiple Common Voice releases, languages and alternate splitting strategies.

This tooling will be part of ToolBox, to be released separately. It will evantually be transformed into a more generalized script in the core.

In the current state the toolchain is:

cv-tbox-split-maker (create splits) => cv-tbox-dataset-compiler (compile detailed statistics) => cv-tbox-dataset-analyzer (web interface/visualization tool for statistics)

Note: This repository has been renamed from "Common Voice Diversity Check" into "Common Voice Toolbox - Split Maker"

Why?

• Before feeding your dataset into a lengthy training it is a must to check the health of your dataset splits. Do you train with male voices only? Are there enough distinct voices in train/dev/test sets? How much of your validated data does your actual splits use?
• You are a Common Voice language community lead, a new release comes out, you did a great job in your last campaign! Or did you? Did your female/male ratio improve as you aimed?
• You work on multiple Common Voice languages and want to compare them.
• How is your language dataset changing through versions/years?
• You want to use different alternative splitting strategies and want to compare it with the default splits or other strategies, but are they diverse enough?
• Or, all of the above...

The process of doing these with L languages, V versions and A splitting algorithmn means repeated processing of L*V*A splits creation and their analysis.

This is where this tool comes in. You just put your data in directories and feed them to scripts.

Scripts

In the required execution order:

Extracting from downloaded datasets

python3 extract.py [--all] [--delta] [--force]

Expands files from downloaded .tar.gz dataset files residing in a directory, into another directory.

Options:

• --all : Also audio files under clips are expanded. If not specified, only the .tsv files are extracted.
• --delta : Use delta release directory to expand files. If not specified, full version directory will be used as source
• --force : Normally, already expanded files are not re-extracted (checked at language directory level). If --force is specified, existing languages/files get overwritten.

Merging previous versions with delta releases to get the newest relase

python3 merge_delta.py

We have previous FULL dataset(s) (e.g. v18.0) and downloaded DELTA dataset(s) (v19.0 delta) - and extracted all of the .tsv (and maybe .mp3) files. This script combines them and creates the new FULL dataset (e.g. v19.0 FULL). But:

• It does NOT handle .mp3 files to prevent duplication. If you want, you can just merge the clips directories (e.g. v18.0/clips/*.mp3 and v19.0-delta/clips/*.mp3 into the new v19.0/clips by moving them)
• It does NOT create the missing training splits (i.e. train.tsv, dev.tsv, and test.tsv files). It is the job of the s1 algorithm as explained below. After creating the default splits, you can manually copy them into the created full version directory (e.g. v19.0 in the above example)
• The result metadata will have the same records, but in different order due to different algorithms. In general, the order should not be important because during training they should be randomized anyway.

The script handles the following:

• (If they exists) merges validated.tsv, invalidated.tsv, reported.tsv and clip_durations.tsv files and writes them into new full dataset directory
• Handles other.tsv: Some of the records in old other.tsv might be distributed to validated.tsv and invalidated.tsv, others might be added. We drop the moved ones and add new ones from the new DELTA.
• From the new DELTA, copies other non-delta style files directly into new full dataset directory (currently *_sentences.tsv files, but this might change in future CV releases)
• De-duplicates merged files (except reported.tsv, which can include multiple reports of the same sentence with the same reason)

After running this script you should:

• Import the resultand files with collect.py (see below)
• Run CorporaCreator s1 algorithm to create the default splits for the new FULL dataset (i.e. train.tsv, dev.tsv, and test.tsv)
• If desired, copy generated training splits back into the full expanded dataset directory (you should do it manually for now)

Importing extracted (and/or delta-merged) .tsv files into split-maker

python3 collect.py

From the expanded FULL dataset directory, copies metadata files to internal space to work on (these include common .tsv files and default split files).

Splitting

• algorithm_xxx.py : Different splitting algorithms to execute (see below)

NOTE: While running the algorithmns, we drop any voices that we know that they have deleted their recordings. We keep the data under the <repo_root>/data directory. We will be analyzing the complete data and extend this list. Deleted users' recordings do not exist in later CV releases - after their deletion request, but we should also honor their wishes when working with previous versions.

Discontinued script (the results can already be seen in the Dataset Analyzer)

• tbox_diversity_table.py : The script will scan all experiments, versions, and languages under experiments directory and builds results/$diversity_data.tsv file containing everything. You can then take it and analyze further or use the Excel file provided.

How

To prepare:

• Clone the repo and cd into it
• Use Python v3.12.x+, create a venv and activate it (prefer latest - we work with latest and do not check compatibility issues in older versions).
• Run pip install -U -r requirements.txt to install the dependencies.
• Put your downloaded dataset(s) into a directory (e.g. /downloaded_datasets/cv-corpus-18.0-2024-06-14/*.tar.gz)
• If you work with delta releases, put them also into the same directory (e.g. /downloaded_datasets/cv-corpus-19.0-delta-2024-09-13/*.tar.gz)
• Create a directory for expanded dataset files (e.g. /datasets which would include subdirs like cv-corpus-18.0-2024-06-14/<lc> when expanded)
• Edit conf.py to point to these directories and specify the versions you want to work with.
• Run python extract.py to extract only the .tsv files from the datasets (see above for options)
• (If working with delta) Run python merge_delta.py to merge previous full versions with new delta versions (do not forget to run the s1 algorithm for in this case)
• Run python collect.py to copy the metadata files into the internal working area
• Run the aplitting algoritm(s) you desire

The internal data directory structure is like:

data_root/experiments
    <exp>                           # e.g. s1, s99, v1
        <cv-corpus>                 # e.g. cv-corpus-NN.N-YYYY-MM-DD
            <lc>                    # Language directory (en, tr etc)
                *.tsv               # Metadata (*.tsv only)
            ...
        ...
    <exp>
        ...

Under experiments/s1, ALL .tsv files from the release can be found. Other algorithm directories only contain train/dev/test.tsv files.

A NOTE: We work with all versions and languages to analyze them. But you can work with a single language or a couple of languages. The scripts are data-driven, they will process what you put into the source directories. So you might we be working with a single language and want to add another, no problem (if not forced to overwrite from config.py, the scripts will exclude already processed languages checking directory existance).

Algorithms and the data

The data we use is huge and not suited for github. We used the following:

• s1: Default splits in datasets, created by the current Common Voice CorporaCreator (-s 1 default option)
• s5/s99: Alternative splits created by the current Common Voice CorporaCreator with -s 5 and 99 options, taking up to 5/99 recordings per sentence. 5 is a reasonable number and 99 takes nearly the whole dataset. Note that as of 2024 the limit per sentence is 15 recordings at max (except "benchmark" sentences from 2021, containing numbers, yes, no etc.)
• v1: ("Voice First") Alternative split created by "algorithm-v1.py". This is a 80-10-10% (train-dev-test) splitting with 25-25-50% voice diversity (nearly) ensured. This algorithm has been suggested to Common Voice Project for being used as default splitting algorithm, with a report including a detailed analysis and some training results.
• vw: ("Voice first for Whisper") A version of v1 for better OpenAI Whisper fine-tuning, with 90-5-5% splits, keeping 25-25-50% diversity (only available for Whisper languages, speeds up training).
• vx: ("Voice first for eXternal test") A version of v1 with 95-5-0% splits and 50-50-0% diversity, so no test split, where you can test your model against other datasets like Fleurs or Voxpopuli (only available for Fleurs & Voxpopuli languages).

For vw and vx we limited the process to only include datasets with >=2k recordings in validated bucket. Language codes for different dataset flavors are listed in languages.py file.

Compressed splits for each language / dataset version / algorithm can be found under the shared Google Drive location. To use them in your trainings, just download one and override the default train/dev/test.tsv files in your expanded dataset directory. Make sure you match the versions.

Other

License

AGPL v3.0

Some Performance Metrics

Here are some performance metrics I recorded on the following hardware after the release of Common Voice v16.1, where I re-implemented the multipprocessing and ran the whole set of algorithms (except s1, which I've taken from the releases) on all active CV releases (we leave out intermediate/corrected ones like v2, 5.0, 6.0, 16.0 etc).

• Intel i7 8700K 6 core / 12 tread @3.7/4.3 GHz, 48 GB DDR4 RAM @3000 GHz (>32 GB empty)
• Compressed Data: On an external 8TB Seagate Backup+ HUB w. USB3 (100-110 MB/s, ~60-65 MB/s continuous read)
• Expanded Data: On an internal Western Digital WD100EMAZ SATA 3 HDD (~90-120 MB/s R/W)
• Working Data: On system drive 2TB Samsung 990 Pro (w. PCIe v3.0), thus ~3500/3500 MB/s R/W speed

Algo	Total DS	Processed DS	Total Dur	Avg Sec per DS
s99	1,222	1,207	05:40:02	16.904
v1	1,222	1,222	00:05:03	0.251
vw	1,222	633	00:03:32	0.336
vx	1,222	617	00:03:23	0.330

DS: Dataset. All algorithms ran on 12 parallel processes

TO-DO/Project plan, issues and feature requests

You can look at the results Common Voice Dataset Analyzer. This will eventually be part of the Common Voice Toolbox's Core, but it will be developed here...

The project status can be found on the project page. Please post issues and feature requests, or Pull Requests to enhance.

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FUTURE REFERENCE

Although this will go into the core, we will also publish it separately. Below you'll find what it will become (tentative, might change):

tbox_split_maker

The script can use alternative splitting strategies for you to try on your language/languages. Then you should re-run "tbox_diversity_table" to analyze statistics in these new splits and compare with other strategies.

python3 tbox_split_maker <--split_strategy|--ss <strategy_code> [<parameter>] > [--exp <experiments_directory>] --in <path|experiment> --out <path|experiment> [--verbose]

Options:

--exp <experiments_directory> : If given, experiments are searched/created under this directory. If not given, experiments directory under cloned repo will be used.

--in <path|experiment> : If an existing full path is given, that directory is used to feed the default splits (eg: --in c:\datasets\cv\v10.0\en). If only a string is given (e.g. --in releases) given string is assumed to be under the experiments_directory and searched there.

--out <path|experiment> : If an existing full path is given (e.g. --out d:\trials\splits), it will be used for output of new splits. If only a string is given (e.g. --out releases) given string is assumed to be under the experiments_directory and created there. In either case, first the source is copied to destination and THEN the new slits override the existing ones. Other unrelated .tsv files are also being copied for dataset completeness. If your splits seem ok, you can just copy-override the original dataset you downladed and expanded with these files.000

--verbose: Prints out more information, by default minimal information is displayed.

Currently supported strategies:

--split_strategy cc [N]

Run Common Voice's Corpora Creator with alternative recordings per sentence setting. By default, this is 1, meaning there is 1 recording per sentence in the final splits, even if different users might record sentences multiple times. Although this setting is meaningful to prevent sentence bias, it might be desirable to have sentences recorded by different voices/genders/ages/accents so that your model gets better on alternatives. Also, especially with low resource languages, the default setting drops the training split size to a small fraction of what's available.

For this to work, you need to clone and compile Mozilla Common Voice CorporaCreator repo as follows:

git clone https://github.com/common-voice/CorporaCreator.git
cd CorporaCreator; python3 setup.py install

--split_strategy sentence <train_percent> <dev_percent> <test_percent>

In this strategy sentence unbiasing has the presedence, so that no sentence is repeated in other splits. But voices (people) can exists in other splits. This strategy ensures that the whole validated set is used. You might like to experiment with percentages thou. Usually 80-10-10 or 70-15-15 are considered good values (make sure they add up to 100).

Ex:

python tbox_split_maker --exp ~/cv/experiments --in default --out test-70-15-15 --ss sentence 70 15 15

--split_strategy sentence-voice <train_percent> <dev_percent> <test_percent>

This algorithm is similar to the "sentence" strategy, but it ensures no same voice exists in other splits. Therefore the dataset will not fully be used. The test and dev will be as desired, but the train split will be smaller, not adding to 100. This strategy prevents both sentence and voice bias and usually uses most of the validated set. Unused amount totaly depends on the dataset, how much text-corpus, voice contributors, repeated recording it has, and if people are recording too few and/or too much sentences. Therefore it is a good practice to analyze the generated split with tbox_directory_table script...

Ex:

python tbox_split_maker --exp ~/cv/experiments --in default --out test-70-15-15 --ss sentence-voice 70 15 15 # note that these numbers are target, result will be different

--split_strategy random <train_percent> <dev_percent> <test_percent>

This is a dummy algorithm and does not care on any bias. It splits the whole dataset randomly and fully. The resultant model performance in terms of bias might also be random. Here, also the split percentages doesn't need to add up to 100. This is provided for experimenting, by slicing different smaller sizes.

Ex:

python tbox_split_maker --exp ~/cv/experiments --in default --out random-50-10-10 --ss sentence-voice 50 10 10

Note: We will add more options to limit data, e.g. taking max N recordings from a single voice, taking demographic data into account, such as equal gender, etc.