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Comment by dotancohen

10 days ago

Why would one use FFmpeg with Whisper support, instead of using Whisper directly?

At least whisper.cpp only supports a few input formats like WAV and MP3. To get subtitles for videos I always have to first run ffmpeg to get an audio file and then run whisper.cpp. Guess this new feature may mean that I can do it in just one step, so slightly more convenient?

  • I see, thanks. I actually do almost all my Whisper work with ogg files, and got into a snag recently with m4a files. Transcoding to an equivalent size ogg or mp3 killed the quality, and wav is too big. Maybe FFmpeg could be of service here.

I run a service that does transcriptions as part of the pipeline, and I use ffmpeg for other parts (such as speeding up audio). Having it all on a single command might make sense for some people if the costs work out.