In case you ever have to transcribe audio or video to textual content, most present apps are powered by OpenAI’s Whisper mannequin. You’re in all probability utilizing this mannequin when you use apps like MacWhisper to transcribe conferences or lectures, or to generate subtitles for YouTube movies.
However iOS 26 and Apple’s different developer betas embrace the corporate’s personal transcription frameworks – and a take a look at means that they match Whisper’s accuracy whereas operating at greater than twice the pace …
In case you’ve ever used the built-in dictation capabilities of any of your Apple units, that is dealt with by Apple’s personal speech framework. Within the new betas, there are beta variations of SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriber which builders can use in their very own apps.
Use the Speech framework to acknowledge spoken phrases in recorded or dwell audio. The keyboard’s dictation help makes use of speech recognition to translate audio content material into textual content. This framework supplies the same conduct, besides that you need to use it with out the presence of the keyboard.
For instance, you would possibly use speech recognition to acknowledge verbal instructions or to deal with textual content dictation in different components of your app. The framework supplies a category, SpeechAnalyzer, and numerous modules that may be added to the analyzer to offer particular kinds of evaluation and transcription. Many use circumstances solely want a SpeechTranscriber module, which supplies speech-to-text transcriptions.
MacStories‘ John Voorhees requested his son to create a command-line device to check this new functionality, and was extremely impressed by the outcomes.
I requested Finn what it will take to construct a command line device to transcribe video and audio recordsdata with SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriber. He figured it will solely take about 10 minutes, and he wasn’t far off. Ultimately, it took me longer to get round to putting in macOS Tahoe after WWDC than it took Finn to construct Yap, a easy command line utility that takes audio and video recordsdata as enter and outputs SRT- and TXT-formatted transcripts.
He used a 34-minute video to check it in opposition to each MacWhisper and VidCap, two of the most well-liked transcription apps. He discovered the Apple’s modules matched the accuracy of those, however was greater than twice as quick as probably the most environment friendly current app, MacWhisper operating the Massive V3 Turbo mannequin:
| App | Transcription Time |
|---|---|
| Yap (utilizing Apple’s framework) | 0:45 |
| MacWhisper (Massive V3 Turbo) | 1:41 |
| VidCap | 1:55 |
| MacWhisper (Massive V2) | 3:55 |
He argues that whereas this might sound a comparatively trivial enchancment for one-off duties, the variations will rapidly add up when performing both batch transcriptions or needing to transcribe recordsdata very commonly, like college students with lecture notes.
In case you’re operating the macOS Tahoe developer beta, you possibly can set up Yap from GitHub to check it for your self.
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Picture: 9to5Mac screengrab of a YouTube video subtitle file
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