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OpenAI charges by the minute, so speed up your audio

(george.mand.is)
703 points georgemandis | 5 comments | 25 Jun 25 13:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.827s | source
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w-m ◴[25 Jun 25 15:21 UTC] No.44378345[source]▶
With transcribing a talk by Andrej, you already picked the most challenging case possible, speed-wise. His natural talking speed is already >=1.5x that of a normal human. One of the people you absolutely have to set your YouTube speed back down to 1x when listening to follow what's going on.

In the idea of making more of an OpenAI minute, don't send it any silence.

E.g.

    ffmpeg -i video-audio.m4a \
      -af "silenceremove=start_periods=1:start_duration=0:start_threshold=-50dB:\
                         stop_periods=-1:stop_duration=0.02:stop_threshold=-50dB,\
                         apad=pad_dur=0.02" \
      -c:a aac -b:a 128k output_minpause.m4a -y
will cut the talk down from 39m31s to 31m34s, by replacing any silence (with a -50dB threshold) longer than 20ms by a 20ms pause. And to keep with the spirit of your post, I measured only that the input file got shorter, I didn't look at all at the quality of the transcription by feeding it the shorter version.
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1. CSMastermind ◴[26 Jun 25 16:34 UTC] No.44388970[source]▶
> to set your YouTube speed back down to 1x

Is it common for people to watch Youtube sped up?

I've heard of people doing this for podcasts and audiobooks and never understood it all that much there. Just feels like 'skimming' a real book instead of actually reading it.

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2. Feathercrown ◴[26 Jun 25 16:39 UTC] No.44389007[source]▶
Some people talk slower than your natural listening speed. It's less like skimming and more like if some books used 36pt font and you normalized the size back down to a comfortable information-dense size.
3. Eezee ◴[26 Jun 25 16:39 UTC] No.44389010[source]▶
That's completely different. Imagine you are reading a book and the words only get revealed to you at 1 word a second. You would get annoyed if your natural reading speed was higher than that.

Same with a video. A lot of people speak considerably slower than you could process the information they are conveying, so you speed it up. You still get the same content and are not skipping parts as you would when skimming a book.

4. keithxm23 ◴[26 Jun 25 16:42 UTC] No.44389033[source]▶
Often, I'll come across speakers who just speak slowly and listening at 1.5x or 2x barely feels sped-up.

Additionally, the brain tends to adjust to a faster talking speed very quickly. If I'm watching an average-paced person talk and speed them up by 2x, the first couple minutes of listening might be difficult and will require more intent-listening. However, the brain starts processing it as the new normal and it does not feel sped-up anymore. To the extent that if I go back to 1x, it feels like the speaker is way too slow.

5. 83 ◴[26 Jun 25 17:11 UTC] No.44389268[source]▶
>>Just feels like 'skimming' a real book instead of actually reading it.

That's the goal for me lately. I primarily use Youtube for technical assistance (where are the screws to adjust this carburetor?, how do I remove this brake hub?, etc). There used to be short 1 to 2m videos on this kind of stuff but nowadays I have to suffer through a 10-15 minute video with multiple ad breaks.

So now I always watch youtube at 2x speed while rapidly jumping the slider forward to find relevant portions.