Troubleshoot

In birdnetR: Deep Learning for Automated (Bird) Sound Identification

knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>"
)

Long Pause After Prediction

If you notice a significant pause after BirdNET has finished processing your audio file but before returning the results, this is likely due to data conversion overhead between Python and R. This is particularly noticeable when:

• Processing long audio files (>20 minutes)
• Using low confidence thresholds that generate many predictions (min_confidence < 0.1)
• Working with memory-constrained environments

Solution: Use Apache Arrow

Apache Arrow can significantly reduce these delays by optimizing data transfer between Python and R. While there are no drawbacks to enabling Arrow, the performance gains are negligible when processing small amounts of data.

To enable Arrow:

1. Install the required packages using install_arrow()
2. Restart your R session
3. Set the use_arrow argument to TRUE in the predict_species_from_audio_file() function

Credits to Danielle Navarro for the original solution^[Navarro, Danielle. 2022. “Passing Arrow Data Between R and Python with Reticulate.” September 9, 2022. https://blog.djnavarro.net/posts/2022-09-09_reticulated-arrow/.].

birdnetR documentation built on June 8, 2025, 10:29 a.m.