Video Transcribe

Extract text from video links (Douyin, Bilibili, YouTube, Kuaishou, etc.) with timestamps.

Dependencies

pip install yt-dlp openai-whisper
winget install ffmpeg  # Windows
# brew install ffmpeg  # macOS
# sudo apt install ffmpeg  # Linux

First-time Setup

Model cache directory (recommended: non-system drive)

Whisper large-v3 model is ~2.9GB. Set cache to a non-system drive:

# Windows PowerShell (permanent, User-level):
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("WHISPER_DOWNLOAD_ROOT", "X:\whisper_cache", "User")

# macOS/Linux (~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc):
export WHISPER_DOWNLOAD_ROOT="~/whisper_cache"

Video download directory (optional)

# Windows PowerShell:
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("VIDEO_DOWNLOAD_DIR", "X:\video_downloads", "User")

# macOS/Linux:
export VIDEO_DOWNLOAD_DIR="~/video_downloads"

yt-dlp global config (optional)

# Windows: Create %APPDATA%\yt-dlp\config (one line):
-o X:\video_downloads\%(title)s.%(ext)s

# macOS/Linux: Create ~/.config/yt-dlp/config (one line):
-o ~/video_downloads/%(title)s.%(ext)s

Usage

Agent call

python transcribe.py "<video_url>" [model] [prompt]

• model: large-v3 (default, best quality) or turbo (faster)
• prompt: optional context hint for better recognition

Manual use

python transcribe.py "<video_url>"

Output

• Segmented text: with timestamps for editing

  [0.0s-8.0s] Text here...
  [8.0s-20.0s] More text...
  

• Full text: plain text for copying
• Video file: saved to download directory

Supported Platforms

yt-dlp supports 1000+ sites: Douyin, TikTok, Bilibili, YouTube, Kuaishou, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Xigua Video, etc.

Notes

• CPU-only, no GPU required
• large-v3: ~77s per minute of video on CPU
• Chinese text optimized with punctuation
• Models stored in WHISPER_DOWNLOAD_ROOT directory
• If env vars not set, defaults to script directory