Speech to Text

Problem

To convert a podcast mp3 into text file.

Solutions

Online

1. Adobe Podcast
2. Otter.ai

Offline, local

By using openai Whisper.

Step 1: Get the .mp3 or .wav file from the podcast.

In PowerShell (windows)

Step 2: check if you have python installed on your system.

> python --version

Step 3: use pip to install openai.whisper from their repo (MIT license)

> python -m pip install git+https://github.com/openai/whisper.git

Step 4: check if you have ffmpeg installed in your system.

> ffmpeg -h

if not, install it on your system. I used Scoop to install it

scoop install ffmpeg

Step 5: make sure whisper.exe is in your Path environment, if not do it in your System Variables and Reboot or use the path of the file.

whisper podcast.mp3 --model small --output_format txt --task transcribe

it will download the ‘small’ model and then transcribe the podcast into a local text file.

Other options:

• You can use it to translate the podcast mp3 into whichever language you want.

whisper podcast_in_spanish.mp3 --model small --output_format txt --language english --task translate

• you can use it programmatically within python or django frameworks.

Text to Speech

Online

Elevenlabs, Murf.ai, and Speechify

Offline for Android

Piper TTS engine

1. goto https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/tts/apk-engine.html
2. Find an English voice you want - en_US-libritts_r-medium or en_GB-jenny-dioco-medium are good ones which I checked.
3. Download the APK for your device - arm64-v8a is the last 5 years usage. around 80mb files. You can only install one of the them.
4. Install it and use it instead of the default Google TTS.
5. Now Moon+ Reader or Librera can use it.