xscribe 0.1.0

Transcribe video and audio to markdown with timestamps. Supports local files and streams.

xscribe

Download and transcribe any online video in minutes.

Turn any video or audio file into a clean, timestamped markdown transcript. Just point xscribe at a file or stream URL and get a readable transcript — no cloud services, no subscriptions, everything runs locally on your machine.

Powered by faster-whisper.

Install

pip install xscribe

You also need ffmpeg installed on your system:

# macOS
brew install ffmpeg

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install ffmpeg

# Windows
winget install ffmpeg

Quick start

Transcribe a video file on your computer:

xscribe interview.mp4

This creates interview.md in your current folder with the full transcript and timestamps.

Transcribe an online video stream:

xscribe "https://stream.example.com/video/playlist.m3u8"

xscribe will download the video first, then transcribe it. You'll need yt-dlp installed for this (brew install yt-dlp or pip install yt-dlp).

Usage examples

# Transcribe a podcast episode you downloaded
xscribe episode-42.mp3

# Transcribe a lecture recording
xscribe lecture.mov

# Transcribe a YouTube stream you grabbed the URL for
xscribe "https://manifest.googlevideo.com/.../playlist.m3u8"

# Use a more accurate model (slower but better for tricky audio)
xscribe meeting.mp4 -m large-v3

# Save the transcript to a specific file
xscribe keynote.mp4 -o keynote-notes.md

Supported file types: mp4, mp3, wav, mov, mkv, webm, m4a, flac, ogg, and anything else ffmpeg can read.

How to get an .m3u8 URL from any website

Most streaming videos use .m3u8 playlist URLs behind the scenes. Here's how to find them:

1. Open the website with the video in Chrome or any browser
2. Right-click anywhere on the page and select Inspect (or press F12)
3. Click the Network tab in the developer tools panel
4. Play the video on the page
5. In the Network tab's filter/search bar, type .m3u8
6. You'll see one or more requests appear — right-click the URL and select Copy URL
7. Paste it into xscribe: xscribe "https://...your-copied-url.m3u8"

Model sizes

xscribe uses OpenAI's Whisper speech recognition. You can choose different model sizes depending on whether you want speed or accuracy:

Model	Flag	Best for
Tiny	-m tiny	Quick and dirty, when you just need the gist
Base	(default)	General use, good balance of speed and quality
Small	-m small	Better accuracy, still reasonably fast
Medium	-m medium	High accuracy for important transcripts
Large	-m large-v3	Best possible accuracy, but slowest

The model downloads automatically the first time you use it and gets cached for future runs.

Output format

xscribe saves transcripts as markdown files with timestamps:

# Transcription

**Source:** `interview.mp4`

---

**[00:03]** Hello and welcome to the show.

**[00:07]** Today we're joined by a special guest...

**[01:24]** Let's dive into the first topic.

License

MIT