Welcome back! In this lesson, we will bring together the core functionality for our audio and video transcriber using Go, FFmpeg, and the Whisper API. We will combine the media file-splitting process from the previous lesson with the transcription step and ensure that our application robustly handles errors and cleans up any temporary files created during processing. Proper error handling and cleanup are essential for building reliable and efficient applications, especially when working with large files and external APIs.

Let's dive in and see how to structure this process in Go!

Let's look at how to structure the main transcription workflow in Go. The process involves splitting a large media file into smaller chunks, transcribing each chunk using the Whisper API, and then cleaning up any temporary files created during the process. In Go, we use explicit error handling and defer statements to ensure resources are managed correctly.

Here's an example of how you might implement the main transcription function in internal/transcriber/transcriber.go:

And here's the supporting utility functions in internal/utils/utils.go:

In Go, file cleanup is typically handled using the os.Remove or os.RemoveAll functions. It's important to handle errors during cleanup, but not to let a single failure prevent the rest of the cleanup process.

Here's a simple cleanup function in internal/utils/utils.go:

Key points:

• We check if the path is a file or directory and remove it accordingly.
• Errors are returned so they can be logged, but the cleanup process continues for all files.

In this lesson, we've learned how to implement a robust transcription workflow in Go by:

• Structuring the main process to split large media files, transcribe each chunk, and combine the results
• Using Go's explicit error handling to manage failures at each step
• Employing defer to guarantee cleanup of temporary files, regardless of whether an error occurs
• Implementing systematic cleanup using Go's standard library functions

These practices are essential for building reliable Go applications that efficiently manage resources and handle errors gracefully. As you move to the practice section, you'll have the opportunity to apply these concepts to real-world scenarios.