OpenAI charges by the minute, so speed up your audio

I was trying to summarize a 40-minute talk with OpenAI’s transcription API, but it was too long. So I sped it up with ffmpeg to fit within the 25-minute cap. It worked quite well (Up to 3x speeds) and was cheaper and faster, so I wrote about it.

Felt like a fun trick worth sharing. There’s a full script and cost breakdown.

You could have kept quiet and started a cheaper than openai transcription business :)

Sure, but now the world is a better place because he shared something useful!

Pre-processing of the audio still a valid biz, multiple types of pre-processing might be valid

Or openai will do it themselves for transcription tasks

I've already done that [1]. A fraction of the price, 24-hour limit per file, and speedup tricks like the OP's are welcome. :)

[1] https://speechischeap.com

Nice. Don't expect you to spill the beans but is it doing OK (some customers?)

Just wondering if I cam build a retirement out of APIs :)

It's sustainable, but not enough to retire on at this point.

> Just wondering if I cam build a retirement out of APIs :)

I think it's possible, but you need to find a way to add value beyond the commodity itself (e.g., audio classification and speaker diarization in my case).