question

Kailash P avatar image
Kailash P asked

Alexa not playing google drive links which it used to play earlier( on my live skill)

Hi,

I have a skill called as "My Audio", it can play google drive link( or any proper link). Me and my users used to play it but I see in logs now that it's not playing links for e.g this is one link :-


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KhkJgVsN5sjhQeyy0zk2mtg3A5fxLG62/view?usp=sharing


it's not playing but similar links it used to play earlier.

Is there anything changed in the logic w.r.t to playing of links?

I am sure it used to play earlier but when I saw in my logs today that it's not playing now, I am raising this ticket.

Request you to check on priority as my users are facing this issue.


@Anand@Amazon , @Apeksha@amazon , @barry@amazon , can you please help.


Thanks

Kailash


alexa skills kitask sdk
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Kailash P avatar image Kailash P commented ·

@Jason@amazon, @KirkC@Amazon , request your support please.

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KirkC@Amazon avatar image
KirkC@Amazon answered

Hi Kailash P. I'm a little surprised that a Google Drive link would have ever worked previously.

This link provided isn't technically a link to an .mp3 file itself. When you navigate to this URL the browser loads a Google Drive UI which includes a player that in turn plays an .mp3 from your drive.

If you haven't done so already, I think I would recommend a file-sharing service that allows you to provide links to the .mp3 file directly, such as AWS S3.

Beyond that though, I downloaded the "BackGroundMusic.mp3" to check it against our .mp3 requirements listed here:
https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/custom-skills/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference.html#audio

I found that the file's current bitrate is 192 kbps, whereas we require a bitrate of 48 kbps. Having run into that scenario myself, I can say that is something which will definitely result in an .mp3 not playing.

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Kailash P avatar image Kailash P commented ·

@KirkC@Amazon , thanks for your reply, yes, the google drive links used to play , even I have used it many times. I am not sure about the bitrate thing. I will check it and update you.

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