auto-editor-transcribe

name	auto-editor-transcribe
description	Transcribe a media file's speech to text or subtitles with auto-editor's whisper subcommand, then edit by spoken content — cut to keep (or drop) sections whose subtitles match a word or regex. Use when someone wants a transcript/captions, or wants to cut a video based on what is said rather than on loudness.

Transcribe & edit by speech

auto-editor wraps whisper.cpp to transcribe audio, and can cut a timeline based on subtitle content via --edit subtitle/word.

Transcribe — auto-editor whisper

auto-editor whisper <file> <model> [options]

<model> is a path to a ggml whisper model e.g. ggml-small.en.bin, ggml-medium.en.bin, ggml-large-v3.bin. Only the first audio stream is used; it's resampled to 16 kHz first. The transcript prints to stdout by default.

auto-editor whisper example.mp4 ggml-medium.en.bin                      # plain text → stdout
auto-editor whisper example.mp4 ggml-medium.en.bin --format srt -o out.srt

Options: --format text|srt|json, -o/--output FILE, -l/--language en (default auto), -tr/--translate (→ English), -sw/--split-words (one word per token), --queue SECS (default 30), --vad-model PATH, --threads N (default 4).

The whisper filter must be built into the ffmpeg auto-editor uses; otherwise it reports Could not find whisper filter.

Edit by spoken content

--edit subtitle/word marks the time a matching subtitle line occupies as active (kept by default). Use an existing subtitle stream, or transcribe to an .srt first and feed it in.

Method	Active when…	Args (defaults)
subtitle / regex	pattern (regex) matches a line	pattern="" (empty matches every line), stream=0, ignore-case=#f
word	value appears as a whole word	value required, stream=0, ignore-case=#t

pattern is optional for subtitle/regex: with none, the empty regex matches every subtitle line, so --edit subtitle keeps all sections that have a subtitle (i.e. cut everything with no speech). word, by contrast, requires a value.

# Keep only sections that have any subtitle (cut the silent gaps between speech)
auto-editor talk.mkv --edit subtitle

# Keep only sections where "introduction" is spoken
auto-editor lecture.mp4 --edit word:introduction

# Regex match (case-insensitive); keep matched lines
auto-editor talk.mkv --edit "subtitle:pattern=(yes|no),ignore-case=#t"

# Cut filler words instead of keeping them: invert with `not`
auto-editor video.mp4 --edit "(not word:um)"

Transcribe → cut workflow

When the media has no subtitle stream, generate a sidecar named after the input — for talk.mp4, auto-editor auto-loads talk.srt (then talk.ass) when the requested subtitle stream isn't embedded:

auto-editor whisper talk.mp4 ggml-medium.en.bin --format srt -o talk.srt
auto-editor talk.mp4 --edit word:question        # picks up talk.srt automatically

Inspect subtitle streams with auto-editor subdump FILE (text subtitles only; bitmap subtitles won't dump).

For loudness/motion-based cutting and pace, see the auto-editor skill.