Alternative to Speedscriber

Any recommendations to Sppedscriber (which I really like) but losing say 2mins if your video is 1min 2secs is becoming costly.
Any services bill for the actual time you use rather than levelling up per minute?

Marc Lucas wrote:

Any recommendations to Sppedscriber (which I really like) but losing say 2mins if your video is 1min 2secs is becoming costly.
Any services bill for the actual time you use rather than levelling up per minute?

There is a new free MacOS utility called MacWhisper that uses OpenAI's API for multilanguage voice-to-speech transcription. There is a paid version that costs about $10.00 (one-time purchase, not subscription). The free version works pretty well. The paid version has three different AI models. There is no quota limit nor additional cost per minute or per megabyte. The transcription takes place locally on your Mac and does not require upload to the cloud.

MacWhisper can accept input in various audio and video formats, so stripping out the audio of an AV file is not required before importing it.

The fast model is hyper quick -- it can transcribe 10 min of speech in about 5 seconds on my M1 Ultra. The slowest model is still about 3x real time and it can decipher speech fairly well in an extremely noisy environment.

It can produce an SRT file which can be imported to FCP to make captions. Using the timeline index you can search for dialog.

MacWhisper does not currently recognize and categorize multiple speakers like some fancy transcription products do. It can do multi-language transcription but not translation (yet). The developer plans on adding translation, e.g, Spanish speech to English text, in a later update. That is already in the OpenAI Whisper API, he only must add it to his app.

MacWhisper MacOS utility: goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper

Overview by Felipe Baez:

A bit of extra info: MacWhisper requires macOS 13 Ventura. The system specifications also mention that an M1/M2 Mac is recommened. So, you might want to see if the applilcations can run on Intel Macs, if needed...

I'm running Ventura on a 2017 iMac Pro.  MacWhisper runs well on my machine.

I saw your review thanks, will have a better look. However not running Ventura am on an M1 though.

Other alternatives are Descript, Simon Says, or Builder / Lumberjack (which uses Whisper to translate). I think all of this should be built into FCP now (Adobe has had it over a year). I tried a plugin for FCP called Captionator, which, although shows some promise, I found to be pretty flakey.

Don't let the minimum specs for MacWhisper scare you. Worked well pulling up lyrics and dialog off The Dirty Third #2 - Home Sweet Home DVD (2002) using 2014 Mini running Monterey. Transcribe me... impressed!
 

The current version of MacWhisper (as of a week ago) won't run on Monterey, it requires Ventura... at least for me...

Version 1.9 (downloaded today) plays (as of five minutes ago) on a 2014 Mini (running Monterey) transcribes a cassette (recorded 1979) of an accented German (born 1903) answering questions (in broken English) that not even I can't quite make out his words.

VTC wrote:

Version 1.9 (downloaded today) plays (as of five minutes ago) on a 2014 Mini (running Monterey) transcribes a cassette (recorded 1979) of an accented German (born 1903) answering questions in somewhat broken English that I can't quite make out his words.

Cool. Thanks. I'll have to give that a try...

We use Simon Says… the extension in FCP makes export and import very easy for rushes and finished timelines.

There’s monthly plans or pay as you go …

The text editor is on the web and quite efficient.

As with all things do some some tests and practice before you throw the whole shebang at it… it will pay off!

Also a SimonSays.ai guy. Their editor is a little clunky, but I do love the multi-person pulldown for conversations, and the ability to shift phrases with the TC adjusting automatically on the transcripts.