Install and run VideoCaptioner under MacOS

Just saw a few people asking about how to install VideoCaptioner in MacOS, so I created this tutorial for everyone.

If you are good with python, Homebrew... etc, you don't need to read this at all. The front page already has everything you need. This tutorial is targeted toward people who's not familiar with those things.

First of all, what is HomeBrew? Usually software in MacOS are all GUI-based, but there are so many powerful tools online that's text-based. It's a shame that your powerful Mac not be able to use them easily. HomeBrew is the best free tool that let you install those text-based tools effortlessly.

To start, you need to open a terminal screen. This App usually looks like this:

After you click on it, it should come up with a screen like this:

Now you can enter the commands line by line.

First job is to install HomeBrew itself:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

It will ask you about your Mac account password, input it and hit enter.
Then it will give you the last chance to quit. Hit enter again.
A lot of stuff will come up on the screen. After that HomeBrew is installed.
Next type the following commands one line at a time:

brew install aria2
brew install git
brew install [email protected]
brew install ffmpeg
brew install whisper-cpp

When the above 5 all installed, you can type in:

cd Desktop
git clone https://github.com/philpw99/VideoCaptioner.git
cd VideoCaptioner
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
cd source
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Once again, a lot of stuff will come up. When that all finishes, you can type the following to create a "run.commmand" file:
echo "cd Desktop/VideoCaptioner&&source venv/bin/activate&&cd source&&python3 main.py" > run.command
chmod 755 run.command

And the whole job is finished! Well Done !
Whenever you need to run VideoCaptioner, doubleclick on the "VideoCaptioner" folder on the desktop, and run the "run.command".

The voice transcribing so far whisper-cpp and WhisperAPI are the choice. FasterWhisper is only available for Intel Macs. The recommended models for transcribing is large-v2, also if the audio is in English, Large-v3-turbo is also a good choice. Yeah, I admit that Whisper-CPP tends to be buggy, but it has great speed in M series MacBooks.

Now I found a way to run Whisper-CPP better, maybe it won't freeze so often. 😄

Also you can easily update to the latest version by typing: cd Desktop\VideoCaptioner git pull https://github.com/philpw99/VideoCaptioner.git