whisper-live 0.7.1
A nearly-live implementation of OpenAI's Whisper.
License: MIT
Requires Python: >=3.9

# WhisperLive

<h2 align="center">
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PHWCApIcCI"><img
src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/0PHWCApIcCI/0.jpg" style="background-color:rgba(0,0,0,0);" height=300 alt="WhisperLive"></a>
  <br><br>A nearly-live implementation of OpenAI's Whisper.
<br><br>
</h2>

This project is a real-time transcription application that uses the OpenAI Whisper model
to convert speech input into text output. It can be used to transcribe both live audio
input from microphone and pre-recorded audio files.

- [Installation](#installation)
- [Getting Started](#getting-started)
- [Running the Server](#running-the-server)
- [Running the Client](#running-the-client)
- [Browser Extensions](#browser-extensions)
- [Whisper Live Server in Docker](#whisper-live-server-in-docker)
- [Future Work](#future-work)
- [Contact](#contact)
- [Citations](#citations)

## Installation
- Install PyAudio
```bash
 bash scripts/setup.sh
```

- Install whisper-live from pip
```bash
 pip install whisper-live
```

### Setting up NVIDIA/TensorRT-LLM for TensorRT backend
- Please follow [TensorRT_whisper readme](https://github.com/collabora/WhisperLive/blob/main/TensorRT_whisper.md) for setup of [NVIDIA/TensorRT-LLM](https://github.com/NVIDIA/TensorRT-LLM) and for building Whisper-TensorRT engine.

## Getting Started
The server supports 3 backends `faster_whisper`, `tensorrt` and `openvino`. If running `tensorrt` backend follow [TensorRT_whisper readme](https://github.com/collabora/WhisperLive/blob/main/TensorRT_whisper.md)

### Running the Server
- [Faster Whisper](https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper) backend
```bash
python3 run_server.py --port 9090 \
                      --backend faster_whisper
  
# running with custom model
python3 run_server.py --port 9090 \
                      --backend faster_whisper \
                      -fw "/path/to/custom/faster/whisper/model"
```

- TensorRT backend. Currently, we recommend to only use the docker setup for TensorRT. Follow [TensorRT_whisper readme](https://github.com/collabora/WhisperLive/blob/main/TensorRT_whisper.md) which works as expected. Make sure to build your TensorRT Engines before running the server with TensorRT backend.
```bash
# Run English only model
python3 run_server.py -p 9090 \
                      -b tensorrt \
                      -trt /home/TensorRT-LLM/examples/whisper/whisper_small_en

# Run Multilingual model
python3 run_server.py -p 9090 \
                      -b tensorrt \
                      -trt /home/TensorRT-LLM/examples/whisper/whisper_small \
                      -m
```

- WhisperLive now supports the [OpenVINO](https://github.com/openvinotoolkit/openvino) backend for efficient inference on Intel CPUs, iGPU and dGPUs. Currently, we tested the models uploaded to [huggingface by OpenVINO](https://huggingface.co/OpenVINO?search_models=whisper).
  - > **Docker Recommended:** Running WhisperLive with OpenVINO inside Docker automatically enables GPU support (iGPU/dGPU) without requiring additional host setup.
  - > **Native (non-Docker) Use:** If you prefer running outside Docker, ensure the Intel drivers and OpenVINO runtime are installed and properly configured on your system. Refer to the documentation for [installing OpenVINO](https://docs.openvino.ai/2025/get-started/install-openvino.html?PACKAGE=OPENVINO_BASE&VERSION=v_2025_0_0&OP_SYSTEM=LINUX&DISTRIBUTION=PIP#).

```
python3 run_server.py -p 9090 -b openvino
```


#### Controlling OpenMP Threads
To control the number of threads used by OpenMP, you can set the `OMP_NUM_THREADS` environment variable. This is useful for managing CPU resources and ensuring consistent performance. If not specified, `OMP_NUM_THREADS` is set to `1` by default. You can change this by using the `--omp_num_threads` argument:
```bash
python3 run_server.py --port 9090 \
                      --backend faster_whisper \
                      --omp_num_threads 4
```

#### Single model mode
By default, when running the server without specifying a model, the server will instantiate a new whisper model for every client connection. This has the advantage, that the server can use different model sizes, based on the client's requested model size. On the other hand, it also means you have to wait for the model to be loaded upon client connection and you will have increased (V)RAM usage.

When serving a custom TensorRT model using the `-trt` or a custom faster_whisper model using the `-fw` option, the server will instead only instantiate the custom model once and then reuse it for all client connections.

If you don't want this, set `--no_single_model`.


### Running the Client
- Initializing the client with below parameters:
  - `lang`: Language of the input audio, applicable only if using a multilingual model.
  - `translate`: If set to `True` then translate from any language to `en`.
  - `model`: Whisper model size.
  - `use_vad`: Whether to use `Voice Activity Detection` on the server.
  - `save_output_recording`: Set to True to save the microphone input as a `.wav` file during live transcription. This option is helpful for recording sessions for later playback or analysis. Defaults to `False`. 
  - `output_recording_filename`: Specifies the `.wav` file path where the microphone input will be saved if `save_output_recording` is set to `True`.
  - `max_clients`: Specifies the maximum number of clients the server should allow. Defaults to 4.
  - `max_connection_time`: Maximum connection time for each client in seconds. Defaults to 600.
  - `mute_audio_playback`: Whether to mute audio playback when transcribing an audio file. Defaults to False.

```python
from whisper_live.client import TranscriptionClient
client = TranscriptionClient(
  "localhost",
  9090,
  lang="en",
  translate=False,
  model="small",                                      # also support hf_model => `Systran/faster-whisper-small`
  use_vad=False,
  save_output_recording=True,                         # Only used for microphone input, False by Default
  output_recording_filename="./output_recording.wav", # Only used for microphone input
  max_clients=4,
  max_connection_time=600,
  mute_audio_playback=False,                          # Only used for file input, False by Default
)
```
It connects to the server running on localhost at port 9090. Using a multilingual model, language for the transcription will be automatically detected. You can also use the language option to specify the target language for the transcription, in this case, English ("en"). The translate option should be set to `True` if we want to translate from the source language to English and `False` if we want to transcribe in the source language.

- Transcribe an audio file:
```python
client("tests/jfk.wav")
```

- To transcribe from microphone:
```python
client()
```

- To transcribe from a RTSP stream:
```python
client(rtsp_url="rtsp://admin:admin@192.168.0.1/rtsp")
```

- To transcribe from a HLS stream:
```python
client(hls_url="http://as-hls-ww-live.akamaized.net/pool_904/live/ww/bbc_1xtra/bbc_1xtra.isml/bbc_1xtra-audio%3d96000.norewind.m3u8")
```

## Browser Extensions
- Run the server with your desired backend as shown [here](https://github.com/collabora/WhisperLive?tab=readme-ov-file#running-the-server).
- Transcribe audio directly from your browser using our Chrome or Firefox extensions. Refer to [Audio-Transcription-Chrome](https://github.com/collabora/whisper-live/tree/main/Audio-Transcription-Chrome#readme) and https://github.com/collabora/WhisperLive/blob/main/TensorRT_whisper.md

## Whisper Live Server in Docker
- GPU
  - Faster-Whisper
  ```bash
  docker run -it --gpus all -p 9090:9090 ghcr.io/collabora/whisperlive-gpu:latest
  ```

  - TensorRT. Refer to [TensorRT_whisper readme](https://github.com/collabora/WhisperLive/blob/main/TensorRT_whisper.md) for setup and more tensorrt backend configurations.
  ```bash
  docker build . -f docker/Dockerfile.tensorrt -t whisperlive-tensorrt
  docker run -p 9090:9090 --runtime=nvidia --gpus all --entrypoint /bin/bash -it whisperlive-tensorrt

  # Build small.en engine
  bash build_whisper_tensorrt.sh /app/TensorRT-LLM-examples small.en        # float16
  bash build_whisper_tensorrt.sh /app/TensorRT-LLM-examples small.en int8   # int8 weight only quantization
  bash build_whisper_tensorrt.sh /app/TensorRT-LLM-examples small.en int4   # int4 weight only quantization

  # Run server with small.en
  python3 run_server.py --port 9090 \
                        --backend tensorrt \
                        --trt_model_path "/app/TensorRT-LLM-examples/whisper/whisper_small_en_float16"
                        --trt_model_path "/app/TensorRT-LLM-examples/whisper/whisper_small_en_int8"
                        --trt_model_path "/app/TensorRT-LLM-examples/whisper/whisper_small_en_int4"
  ```

  - OpenVINO
  ```
  docker run -it --device=/dev/dri -p 9090:9090 ghcr.io/collabora/whisperlive-openvino
  ```

- CPU
  - Faster-whisper
  ```bash
  docker run -it -p 9090:9090 ghcr.io/collabora/whisperlive-cpu:latest
  ```

## Future Work
- [ ] Add translation to other languages on top of transcription.

## Contact

We are available to help you with both Open Source and proprietary AI projects. You can reach us via the Collabora website or [vineet.suryan@collabora.com](mailto:vineet.suryan@collabora.com) and [marcus.edel@collabora.com](mailto:marcus.edel@collabora.com).

## Citations
```bibtex
@article{Whisper
  title = {Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04356},
  author = {Radford, Alec and Kim, Jong Wook and Xu, Tao and Brockman, Greg and McLeavey, Christine and Sutskever, Ilya},
  publisher = {arXiv},
  year = {2022},
}
```

```bibtex
@misc{Silero VAD,
  author = {Silero Team},
  title = {Silero VAD: pre-trained enterprise-grade Voice Activity Detector (VAD), Number Detector and Language Classifier},
  year = {2021},
  publisher = {GitHub},
  journal = {GitHub repository},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/snakers4/silero-vad}},
  email = {hello@silero.ai}
}