Transcribe Any Video for Free with This Local AI

Learn how to transcribe and translate video or audio files for free by running Whisper locally on your computer. You will create a local terminal-based transcription setup that avoids uploading files to third-party transcription sites. After about 5 minutes of initial setup, a gigabyte-sized, seven-minute video can take about two minutes to transcribe on a MacBook Pro.

• Video or podcast editors
• Privacy-conscious meeting recorders
• Anyone with hours of content to transcribe or translate

You will build a local transcription setup that lets you transcribe any video or audio file with a single terminal command. You will also be able to translate non-English audio into English automatically.

• A reusable local Whisper install
• A one-command workflow for transcribing files
• Transcript and caption outputs such as .txt and .srt files
• An optional translation workflow for non-English audio

• A Mac or Windows computer
• Python 3
• Homebrew on Mac or Chocolatey on Windows for installing ffmpeg
• A video or audio file you want to transcribe
• About 5 minutes for the initial setup

• After transcribing a file, you can reuse the outputs as plain text transcripts, closed captions, or editor-ready subtitle files. You can also control the output folder and format, or batch process a folder of recordings to create transcripts for every file.