Audio & Video to Text: Speech to Text Transcription (Whisper)

Transcribe audio and video files and podcast episodes to text with OpenAI's Whisper speech recognition (the fast faster-whisper engine). Paste links to MP3, M4A, WAV, MP4 … or a podcast RSS feed, and get the full transcript with timestamps, ready-made SRT and VTT subtitles and the detected language.

• ✅ 99 languages with automatic language detection, or set the language yourself
• ✅ Translate to English from any language in the same step
• ✅ Podcasts: give the RSS feed and choose how many of the newest episodes to transcribe
• ✅ All common formats: MP3, M4A/AAC, WAV, FLAC, OGG, OPUS, WEBM, MP4, MOV, MKV and more (audio track of videos), up to 2 GB
• ✅ Timestamps: segments with start and end, optional word timestamps with confidence
• ✅ Subtitles: SRT and VTT files with download links
• ✅ Skips silence and music without speech, which also prevents made-up text in quiet parts
• ✅ Vocabulary hint for names, brands and technical terms
• ✅ Cost control: transcribe only the first N minutes of each file; the run stops cleanly at your spending limit
• ✅ Fair billing: per started audio minute; broken links and non-media files are free
• ✅ Private: the audio is transcribed on Apify with the open-source Whisper model; it is not sent to OpenAI or any other outside service

Input example

{
    "mediaUrls": ["https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openai/whisper/main/tests/jfk.flac"],
    "podcastFeedUrls": ["https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml"],
    "maxEpisodesPerFeed": 1,
    "model": "small",
    "language": "auto",
    "task": "transcribe",
    "saveSubtitles": true,
    "maxMinutesPerFile": 180
}

Output example

Real output from a test run:

{
    "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openai/whisper/main/tests/jfk.flac",
    "fileName": "jfk.flac",
    "title": null,
    "podcast": null,
    "published": null,
    "model": "small",
    "task": "transcribe",
    "durationSec": 11,
    "transcribedSec": 11,
    "language": "en",
    "languageProbability": 0.944,
    "billedMinutes": 1,
    "wordCount": 22,
    "text": "And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.",
    "processingSec": 26.4,
    "segments": [
        { "start": 0, "end": 11, "text": "And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." }
    ],
    "srtUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/…/records/000-jfk.srt?signature=…",
    "vttUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/…/records/000-jfk.vtt?signature=…"
}

The SRT file from that run:

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:11,000
And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

Podcast episodes also get title, podcast and published. Long transcripts are split into paragraphs at pauses. A summary per file (ok or error with the reason) is saved as OUTPUT in the key-value store.

Speed

Speed depends on the memory you give the run, because Apify assigns CPU in proportion to memory. With the default 4 GB, a 5-minute podcast segment took about 3 minutes in our tests; 8 GB or 16 GB is roughly 2x or 4x faster. The price per audio minute stays the same.

Pricing

A fixed price per started minute of audio that is transcribed, the same for both models.

Paid Apify plans pay less: 5% off on Starter, 10% on Scale and 15% on Business and higher plans. Example: a 30-minute podcast costs $0.60 on the Free plan.

FAQ

Which model should I use? small (default) gives good results for interviews, podcasts, meetings and most languages. base is faster for clean, single-speaker recordings.

Does it separate speakers? No, the transcript has no speaker labels.

Can I transcribe YouTube, TikTok or Instagram links? No. Use direct links to media files you have the right to use, such as your own recordings, files in cloud storage or podcast feeds.

Is my audio stored? Files are processed inside your run and deleted when it ends. Only the transcript and subtitles are saved in your own storage.

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Impressum

Levi Griesinger, Tidelane Data
Besigheimer Straße 18
74369, Löchgau, Deutschland
E-Mail: LeviGriesinger@gmail.com