Media Transcriber - audio, video & podcast to text, SRT and VTT

Turn audio and video files, Google Drive / Dropbox share links and podcast RSS feeds into accurate transcripts with timestamps, ready-made SRT / VTT subtitles and optional word-level timing. Language is detected automatically and any language can be translated to English.

Two engines, one output:

Engine	What you need	Length per file	Price
Your own API key (Groq whisper-large-v3-turbo or OpenAI whisper-1)	A Groq key (free tier available) or an OpenAI key	Up to 12 hours	US$0.002 per audio minute (US$2 per 1,000 minutes)
Built-in local model (Whisper base, int8, CPU)	Nothing	First 10 minutes	US$0.05 per audio minute

With your own key the actor does everything around the API call: it downloads the file, converts it with ffmpeg to a small mono MP3, cuts long media at silences (so no word is split) to respect the 25 MB API upload limit, calls the API in parallel, merges the timestamps and builds the SRT/VTT. The inference itself is billed by Groq/OpenAI directly to your account (Groq's turbo model costs roughly US$0.04 per audio hour at the time of writing).

Your key is an encrypted input field. It is kept in memory only and never logged, stored or written to the dataset.

What you can feed it

• Direct links to mp3, m4a, wav, ogg, opus, flac, aac, mp4, mov, webm, mkv... files
• Google Drive and Dropbox public share links (rewritten to direct downloads, including Drive's "large file" confirmation page)
• Podcast RSS / Atom feeds: the newest N episodes are transcribed (maxEpisodesPerFeed)
• Files uploaded from your computer through the Uploaded files field

Not supported: YouTube and other streaming-site page URLs (they are not media files), password-protected or private links.

Input example

{
  "urls": [
    { "url": "https://example.com/interview.mp3" },
    { "url": "https://feeds.example.com/my-podcast.xml" }
  ],
  "apiKey": "gsk_...your Groq key...",
  "language": "auto",
  "translateToEnglish": false,
  "maxItems": 5,
  "maxEpisodesPerFeed": 3
}

Key options: provider (auto / groq / openai / local), language (auto or a code like es), translateToEnglish, prompt (vocabulary hint), wordTimestamps, maxMinutesPerItem (cap your spend), chunkMinutes, includeSegments, includeSubtitles, saveFilesToKeyValueStore.

Output example

One dataset item per file or episode (failed files are listed with status: "failed" and an error, and are not charged):

{
  "id": "96311eddd848",
  "sourceUrl": "https://example.com/interview.mp3",
  "title": "Interview with Ana",
  "status": "ok",
  "engine": "groq",
  "model": "whisper-large-v3-turbo",
  "task": "transcribe",
  "language": "es",
  "durationSecs": 1812.4,
  "billedMinutes": 31,
  "truncated": false,
  "text": "Hola y bienvenidos...",
  "segments": [{ "id": 0, "start": 0.0, "end": 4.2, "text": "Hola y bienvenidos..." }],
  "srt": "1\n00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,200\nHola y bienvenidos...\n",
  "vtt": "WEBVTT\n\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.200\nHola y bienvenidos...\n",
  "srtUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/.../records/transcript-96311eddd848.srt"
}

The run's key-value store also holds transcript-<id>.txt / .srt / .vtt files and a SUMMARY record (minutes billed, engine, failures).

Pricing

Event	Price	When
audio-minute	US$0.002	per audio minute (rounded up per file) with your Groq/OpenAI key
audio-minute-local	US$0.05	per audio minute with the built-in model (max 10 min per file)

Examples: a 1-hour podcast episode with your key = US$0.12. Ten 5-minute clips with the built-in model = US$2.50. Use maxMinutesPerItem and the run's maximum cost setting to cap spending; the actor stops cleanly when the limit is reached.

FAQ

Which engine should I pick? Use your own Groq key for anything longer than a few minutes or when accuracy matters: large-v3-turbo is far more accurate than the small local model, and much faster. The built-in model is for quick tests and short clips without any account.

Does it keep my files? No. Downloads and converted chunks are deleted as soon as each file is processed. Only the transcript is stored in your run's dataset and key-value store.

What about speakers (diarization)? Not included; the Whisper APIs do not provide it.

A link failed. The error says why (private link, not a media file, too large, no audio track). For Google Drive, sharing must be "Anyone with the link". The actor tries a direct download first and only escalates to Apify proxies if the host blocks it.

Accuracy of translation? With Groq the translation endpoint uses whisper-large-v3; with OpenAI whisper-1. The built-in model can also translate, with lower quality.

Use cases

Podcast show notes and search, meeting and interview transcripts, subtitles for videos, content repurposing, RAG over audio archives, accessibility, call recordings review, lecture notes.

En español

Transcribe audio, video y podcasts (enlaces directos, Google Drive, Dropbox o un feed RSS) a texto con marcas de tiempo, subtítulos SRT/VTT y detección automática del idioma; también puede traducir al inglés.

• Con tu propia API key de Groq (hay capa gratuita) u OpenAI: archivos de hasta 12 horas, US$0,002 por minuto de audio. El actor descarga, convierte, corta en los silencios, une los tiempos y arma los subtítulos. La key es un campo secreto y nunca se guarda ni se registra.
• Sin key: modelo Whisper pequeño integrado, solo los primeros 10 minutos de cada archivo, US$0,05 por minuto.
• Los archivos descargados se borran al terminar. No se admiten enlaces de YouTube.