transcripteur

transcripteur is a CLI that allows you to easily use whisper to transcribe an audio file provided as input.

Quick start

Requirements

All platforms:

• Zig 0.15.x
• CMake

Windows only:

• Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools or Visual Studio 2022
  • Required components: "Desktop development with C++"

Build && setup

Clone project and setup :

git clone https://github.com/shiftwavedev/transcripteur.git
## or via Codeberg
git clone https://codeberg.org/shiftwave/transcripteur.git
cd transcripteur
git submodule update --init --recursive

Build whisper.cpp :

Linux/macOS:

cd whisper.cpp
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. && make -j
cd ../..

Windows:

cd whisper.cpp
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build . --config Release
cd ..\..

Build transcripteur :

zig build                           # Default (dev)
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast    # Maximum speed
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe    # Optimized with safety checks

Run

Basic usage:

Linux/macOS:

./zig-out/bin/transcripteur --model <path> --audio <path>

Windows:

zig-out\bin\transcripteur.exe --model <path> --audio <path>

Multiple files:

# Process multiple audio files at once (comma-separated)
./zig-out/bin/transcripteur --model model.bin --audio "file1.wav,file2.wav,file3.wav"

With language and translation:

# Transcribe in French
./zig-out/bin/transcripteur --model model.bin --audio audio.wav --language fr

# Translate from French to English
./zig-out/bin/transcripteur --model model.bin --audio audio.wav --language fr --translate

Note: On Windows, the required DLLs (whisper.dll, ggml.dll, ggml-base.dll, ggml-cpu.dll) are automatically copied to zig-out\bin\ during the build.

Options

Option	Description
--help or -h	Show all options
--model <path>	Path to Whisper model file (required)
--audio <paths>	Audio file(s) in WAV format. Use comma to separate multiple files (required)
-l, --language <code>	Language code (e.g., en, fr, es, de) or "auto" for automatic detection
--translate	Translate transcription to English (only English translation supported)

Examples

# Simple transcription
./zig-out/bin/transcripteur --model ggml-base.bin --audio recording.wav

# Multiple files with French language
./zig-out/bin/transcripteur --model ggml-base.bin --audio "audio1.wav,audio2.wav" -l fr

# Transcribe Spanish audio and translate to English
./zig-out/bin/transcripteur --model ggml-base.bin --audio spanish.wav -l es --translate

# Auto-detect language for multiple files
./zig-out/bin/transcripteur --model ggml-base.bin --audio "file1.wav,file2.wav,file3.wav" -l auto

License

This project is licensed under the GPLv3 License see the LICENSE file for details.