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Comment by Bakary | Hacker News Reader

Is there such a thing as a simple audio transcribing system that can turn a recording into a text file? I have this problem where I sometimes forget a sentence someone JUST told me. And often my notes aren't sufficient compared to a verbatim recording because I'm liable to forget important contextual info very rapidly. But dealing with raw audio files is a PITA.

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The VOSK library is good for transcription but there seems like a lack of good simple command line frontends for offline transcription of audio files.

mp4grep works and I've been using it but it has some unnecessary features if this is all you want to do (it's mainly designed to cache the transcriptions and let you search them rather than just write them to a text file) and hopefully someone will make a simpler command line transcription tool.

https://alphacephei.com/vosk/install#usage-examples demonstrates the bare-bones vosk-transcriber sample, and there's also https://www.assemblyai.com/blog/getting-started-with-espnet

I wasn't able to play with https://github.com/o-oconnell/mp4grep on ARM.

Ah, vosk-transcriber looks like it's decent, especially if you use srt output so you have timestamps. Probably no reason to use mp4grep for this purpose then.

I'm still hoping for a turn-key open source solution that includes speaker identification.

macOS added this to the OS

https://www.maketecheasier.com/enable-live-captions-ios-maco...

Google meet also has it built in on the client.

Edit: previously incorrectly linked to https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mac-help/mchlc1cb8d54/...

That’s not transcribing. That’s just a feature turning CC on and off in a unified way, no?

You’re right that’s the wrong link. It’s part of macOS Ventura (not yet released)

Details: https://www.maketecheasier.com/enable-live-captions-ios-maco...

Turn on closed captioning?

The more uncomfortable truth is that I'd rather be able to record on a separate device because I will get in trouble for it if it comes to light. It is legal in my region, but people will be (very rightfully) creeped out by it and are unlikely to ever buy my short term memory sob story.

OP mentioned multitasking so maybe they had a similar version of this problem. People aren't going to be happily recorded just for the purpose of someone wanting to preserve their own energy during meetings.

> It is legal in my region, but people will be (very rightfully) creeped out by it and are unlikely to ever buy my short term memory sob story.

Okay, so maybe it's best if you don't do it then?

No, because no harm is done once I delete the files after looking over the notes, and I am able to perform my job far better than otherwise. It's just that from an outside perspective it is unlikely to sound innocuous despite being so.

It's a bit like those 'wait I can explain' situations in sitcoms.

You do you, but if it would creep them out and you knowingly continue while hiding the fact from them, that feels to me like a breach of trust.

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