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hyperframes/skills/media-use/audio/references/transcribe.md

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# Transcription
Create normalized word-level timestamps. **Always specify `--model` explicitly** — the CLI default is `small.en`, which silently translates non-English audio into English.
```bash
npx hyperframes transcribe audio.mp3 --model small.en # known English
npx hyperframes transcribe video.mp4 --model small --language es # known Spanish
npx hyperframes transcribe audio.mp3 --model small # unknown language (auto-detect)
npx hyperframes transcribe subtitles.srt # import existing
npx hyperframes transcribe subtitles.vtt
npx hyperframes transcribe openai-response.json
```
## Language Rule (Non-Negotiable)
`.en` models (`tiny.en` / `base.en` / `small.en` / `medium.en`) **translate** non-English audio into English. This silently destroys the original language.
1. **Known English**`--model small.en` (or `medium.en` for music / noisy audio)
2. **Known non-English**`--model small --language <iso-code>` (no `.en` suffix)
3. **Unknown language**`--model small` (whisper auto-detects)
**CLI default is `small.en`** — do not rely on it; always pass `--model` to make the choice explicit. `--language` also filters out non-target-language segments from mixed-language audio.
## Model Sizes
| Model | Size | Speed | When |
| ---------- | ------ | -------- | ------------------------------------- |
| `tiny` | 75 MB | Fastest | Quick previews, smoke tests |
| `base` | 142 MB | Fast | Short clips, clear audio |
| `small` | 466 MB | Moderate | Default for most multilingual content |
| `medium` | 1.5 GB | Slow | Music with vocals, noisy audio |
| `large-v3` | 3.1 GB | Slowest | Production quality |
### Picking a model by content type
1. Speech over silence / light background → `small.en`
2. Speech over music, or music with vocals → start with `medium.en`
3. Produced music track (vocals + full instrumentation) → start with `medium.en`; expect to need manual lyrics or an external API ([`captions/transcript-handling.md`](captions/transcript-handling.md) → "Using External Transcription APIs")
4. Multilingual → `medium` or `large-v3` (no `.en` suffix), pair with `--language`
## Output Shape
Compositions consume a flat array of word objects. The `id` (`w0`, `w1`, …) is added during normalization for stable references in caption overrides; optional for backwards compatibility.
```json
[
{ "id": "w0", "text": "Hello", "start": 0.0, "end": 0.5 },
{ "id": "w1", "text": "world.", "start": 0.6, "end": 1.2 }
]
```
For mandatory caption-quality checks, retry rules, and the OpenAI/Groq Whisper API import path, see `captions/transcript-handling.md`.