AI Audio Transcriber

A minimalistic application to generate transcriptions for audio built using Python

🚀 Demo

v.0.0.1

v.0.0.2 (Transcribing a Youtube Video Explaining Whisper)

v.0.0.2 (Transcribing an English Song - Thinkin About It)

v.0.0.3 (Transcribing a clip from Lex Fridman's podcast)

v.0.0.4 (Transcribing another clip from Lex Fridman's podcast)

📝 Basic Application WorkFlow

flowchart LR 
    U([Cliemt])
    
    I{Choose\n Input Mode}
    U -----> I
    
    I1[YouTube Video URL] 
    I2[Upload Video File]
    I3[Upload Audio File]
    I ---> I1 & I2 & I3

    YTC{"Check if\n Audio is available?"}
    YTA("Download video\n from YouTube")
    YTV("Download video\n from YouTube")
    
    I1 ---> YTC
    YTC --yes---> YTA
    YTC --no---> YTV

    VTA["Convert Video to Audio"]
    YTV ---> VTA
    I2 ---> VTA

    LA["Load Audio File"]
    YTA & VTA & I3---> LA
    
    M{"Choose\n Model Type"}
    U -----> M

    M1[(Ramanujan)]
    M2[(Bose)]
    M3[(Raman)]
    M4[(Kalam)]
    M ---> M1 & M2 & M3 & M4

    LM[Load Relevant Whisper Model]
    M1 & M2 & M3 & M4 --> LM

    GT("Generate Transcripts")
    LA & LM ---> GT

    O1(["Detected \n Language"])
    O2(["Complete \nSubtitle Text"])
    O3(["Subtitles \nwith Timestamps"])
    GT ---> O1 & O2 & O3

    OF(["Original\n Audio or Video"])
    D{{"Display to Client"}}
    I ---> OF
    O1 & O2 & OF ---> D

    DO{"Choose\n Output Option"}
    D1["SRT\n File"]
    D2["VTT\n File"]
    D3["Text\n File"]
    DP["Process Subtitle Object"]
    DN{{"Download Button"}}

    O3 ---> DP
    U ---> DO
    DO ---> D1 & D2 & D3 ---> DP ---> DN

    subgraph Result
        D
        DN
    end

🥊CI/CD

(Preferred Pipeline Using GitHub Actions for Docker Image)

⚒️ Set-Up Instructions

• Open your terminal / command prompt.

• Clone the repository

  git clone https://github.com/smaranjitghose/AIAudioTranscriber.git
  

• Change the directory to the cloned project

  cd AIAudioTranscriber
  

A. Without using Docker

• Ensure you have any version of Python below 3.10 installed in your system and you have virtualenv package installed

  which python
  

  pip install virtualenv
  

• Create a new virtual environment

  python -m venv env
  

• Activate virtual enviroment

  • On Mac/Linux

    source env/bin/activate
    

  • On Windows

    env/Scripts/Activate.ps1 
    

• Install ffmpeg in your local syste,

  • On Windows using Chocolatey

    choco install ffmpeg
    

  • On MacOS using Homebrew

    brew install ffmpeg 
    

  • On Debian/Ubuntu

    sudo apt update && sudo install ffmpeg
    

  • On Arch Linux

    sudo pacman -S ffmpeg 
    

• Install the dependencies

  pip install -r requirements.txt
  

• Download the model weights (This will take a few minutes since the total size of models in gigabytes)

  python get_model_weights.py
  

• Run the Web application

  streamlit run .\Home.py
  

  Note:

  • If the app does not load by itself in your default browser, open a browser of your choice and navigate to http://localhost:8501
  • To stop the application, press CTRL + C in your terminal

B. Using Docker

• Make sure you have Docker installed on your system. Refer the documentation here if you need assistance setting up.
• Build a docker image

  docker run -t aitranscriber:v0.0.4 .
  

  Note:

  • You may give any name instead of aitranscriber and any tag instead of v0.0.4
  • Depending on your system it takes a few minutes to successfully build the image

• Once complete, check the docker image

  docker images
  

• Create and run a Docker Container for the image

  docker run -p 8501:8501 aitranscriber:v0.0.4
  

  Note:

  • docker run -p <hostport>:<8501> <container_name>:<tag_name>
  • In the above command, you can play around with which port of your host system you wish to map to the 8501 port of the container
  • If you used a different docker image name and/or different tag, make sure to update it in the command

• Open your preferred Web Browser and navigate to http://localhost:8501

  Note:

  • If you used a different host port in the above command then navigate to that one, http://localhost:<host_port>
  • To stop the container, in the terminal check the containter name: docker ps --all
  • Now use container name with the command: docker stop <container_name>

🌏Deployment Options

• Streamlit Cloud

• HuggingFace Spaces

• Fly

• Railway

• Render

• Cyclic

• Heroku

• Digital Ocean

• Google Cloud Run

  • Install Google Cloud CLI
  • Create an Account on Google Cloud
  • Create a New Project
  • Build and Push Docker Image to Google Container Registry

    gcloud builds submit --tag gcr.io/<ProjectName>/<AppName>  --project=<ProjectName>
    

  • Deploy the Docker Container

    gcloud run deploy --image gcr.io/<ProjectName>/<AppName> --platform managed --project=<ProjectName> --allow-unauthenticated
    

• Amazon EC2 Instance

• Azure App

(Using Google Colab/Kaggle as temporary MVP server)

• pyngrok

  • Step 1: Install pyngrok in Google Colab

    ! pip install pyngrok
    

  • Step 2: Sign-up in ngrok and get Authentication Token

  • Step 3: Authenticate

       from pyngrok import ngrok
       ngrok.set_auth_token("xxx")

  • Step 4: Load the Streamlit App at port 8051, create a tunnel for it and reveal the public URL for the tunnel

       !nohup streamlit run app.py --server.port 8051 &
       url = ngrok.connect(8051).public_url
       print(url)

  • Step 5: Share URL with client

• localtunnel

  • Step 1: Install localtunnel

    npm install -g localtunnel
    

  • Step 2

    streamlit run Home.py & npx localtunnel --port 8501
    

  • Step 3: Share URL with client

(Using local server as temporary MVP server)

• NGINX + Cloudfare/ngrok

🏗️ Future Work

• Download and use audio from Youtube Video

• Download and use online audio file

• Use Session States and Caching for Better UX

• Display the language detected propely (without using the shortcode)

• Generate Dedicated SRT,VTT files for transcripts (in addition to txt)

• Update Model options to honour the name of prominent Indian Scientists

• Option to limit/increase input model file size

• Functionality to check the validity URL provided for Youtube Video

• Add Custom Favicon File

• Add Scrollable Text Area for Generated Transcripts

• Containerize the Application with Docker

• Troubleshoot Docker Container locally

• Create Basic Workflow on GitHub Actions for Docker Image Build

• Create Comprehensive Workflow on GitHub Actions for Docker Image Build

• Resolve bug: Youtube video with multiple audios should download default audio.

  • Example: This clip from Huberman Lab is in English yet the script fetches the spanish audio codec from Youtube

• Test Application by spinning up it's Container on Google Cloud Run

  • Push to a particular Docker Image Registry
  • Set TTL
  • Play around with system resources
  • Test with custom domain

• Add Google Cloud's CI/CD to repo on push/pull requests

  • Use cloudbuild.yaml file
  • Update build time to 2 hours

• Optimize Docker Image Size

• Better CI/CD

• Kubernetes Upgrade

• Better GitHub Actions

More Features:

• Burn transcripts to user-uploaded video ```python import os output_video = "final.mp4"

    os.system(f"ffmpeg -i {input_video} -vf subtitles={subtitle} {output_video}")
    ```
  

• Summarize subtitles

• Sentiment analysis on video summary

• Batch transcript generation + summary + sentiment analysis

• Dashboard for video review(s)

Speaker Diarization: Only if Community requires

• Incorporate Speaker Diarization for Podcast/Vlog/Conversational Clips
• Test it with burning transcripts to user uploaded video
• Test it with transcript summarization

More Aligned Subtitles: Only if Community requires

• Word Level Timestamps for transcripts + Generate ASS Transcript File

• Test it with burning transcripts to user uploaded video

• Test it with previous speaker diarization

• Test it with transcript summarization

• Improve UI Natively in Streamlit

API Development: Only if Community requires

• Build API for model inference in FastAPI to handle requests asynchronously (on a different branch perhaps)
• Containerize the API with Docker
• Troubleshoot Docker Container for API
• Host the API on Google/AWS/Linode/Heroku
• Perform basic CI/CD for API
• Rehost Streamlit Application on a different service (Reduce it to client side for most operations)
• Play around with pyScript

Front End Development: Only if Community requires

• Build Basic React Front end
• Connect React Front End to FastAPI
• Add Loader Animation
• Add Animations for model inference times
• Handling Errors in Front End/API
• Upload File Component
• Download Button(s)
• Feedback Form
• Contact Page
• About Page
• Home Page
• Stripe Integration
• Improve Navbar UI
• 404 Page
• Footer UI
• Scrollbar UI
• SEO

CI/CD Pipeline (GitHub Actions)

• SAST (Optional)
• Kubernetes Smoke Test (Optional)
• Using Super Linter for Linting (Optional)
• Unit Tests (Optional)
• Integration Test (Optional)

✏️ Note

• To view the generated transcript file(s) in VS Code IDE install Subtitles Editor extension

• To extensively edit/manipulate the generated transcript file(s) use the open source tool Subtitle Edit

• For Streamlit Sharing, mentioning versions of the modules in requirements throws error at times

• Large Modelv2 outperforms all other versions of Whisper in terms of performance especially in Multi-lingual Transcription. However, it takes a 10 times more V-RAM than the base model and has longer inference time

• To quickly record audio from system microphone use this Python Script:

  • Pre-requisities:

    pip install pyaudio wave
    

• Whisper is unable to read audio file from disk if python-ffmpeg or ffmpeg python pacakges are installed. It only works when ffmpeg-python python package is installed and not the former too

  # Remove all ffmpeg related python packages
  pip uninstall python-ffmpeg ffmpeg ffmpeg-python
  # Install the appropriate pacakge for ffmpeg
  pip install ffmpeg-python
  
  

• Pixabay has a great collection of copyright free, no royalty songs that one can use for testing the application

• Poor Performance for Kanada or Telegu songs (often language recognition itself fails) for base model. Example: Kantara movie's Varaha Roopam Song

Docker Container and CI/CD

• Exclude as much irrelevant files as possible with .dockerignore such as README.MD, LICENSE, snapshots, notebooks, input,output,logs, etc

• Minimize the number of layers (Created by RUN, COPY and ADD)

• Always combine RUN apt-get update with apt-get install in the same RUN statement. Using apt-get update alone in a RUN statement causes caching issues and subsequent apt-get install instructions fail.

• Using RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y ensures your Dockerfile installs the latest package versions with no further coding or manual intervention. This technique is known as “cache busting”.

• In addition, when you clean up the apt cache by removing /var/lib/apt/lists it reduces the image size, since the apt cache is not stored in a layer.

• Python Docker Image Info:

  • Images tagged with stretch/buster/jessie/buster/bullseye are codenames for different Debian Operating System Production releases.
  • bullseye being version 11, buster being version 10, and so on. (2022)
  • bookworm, trixy and forky are work-in-progress releases which may not be stable yet
  • -slim - only installs the minimal packages needed to run the particular tool.

• Base Image with python <= 3.9 raises issue with module backports.zoneinfoand pip fails

• To build and test multi-architecture docker images locally,

  • Create a new buildx instance

    docker buildx create --use
    

  • Build a new docker image for multi-architecture support

     docker buildx build --platform linux/arm64,linux/amd64 -t aitranscriber:multi-architecture -f Dockerfile . 
    

• Checking Docker Image Build for multi-architecture is too time consuming for the current application and disabled

🛡️ License

This project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🙏 Acknowledgements

• General Purpose Speech Recognition Model: OpenAI Whisper
  • GitHub
  • Paper:Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision
• Animations: LottieFiles
• Favicon: PNG Repo
• Sample Test Clip 1: " Thinkin About It " by Niklas Setzkorn from Pixabay