WhisperX - AI Audio Tools Tool

Overview

WhisperX is an open-source enhancement layer for OpenAI's Whisper Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) models that focuses on producing accurate transcriptions with fine-grained, word-level timestamps and optional speaker diarization. Instead of replacing Whisper's acoustic model, WhisperX runs Whisper to generate initial transcripts and then applies an alignment stage to correct and time-stamp words precisely. It also integrates speaker diarization backends to label segments by speaker, producing ready-to-use outputs for subtitling, search, or analytics workflows. Designed for research and production use, WhisperX supports GPU acceleration via PyTorch, can process long-form audio with configurable segmentation and voice activity detection, and emits common subtitle and JSON outputs. According to the GitHub repository (m-bain/whisperX), the project is actively maintained with a large community—over 19k stars and 101 contributors—indicating broad adoption. Typical real-world uses include generating accurate SRT/VTT files with word timestamps, indexing meeting transcripts with speaker labels using pyannote integration, and improving timestamp accuracy for downstream alignment or captioning pipelines.

GitHub Statistics

  • Stars: 19,477
  • Forks: 2,087
  • Contributors: 101
  • License: BSD-2-Clause
  • Primary Language: Python
  • Last Updated: 2025-10-21T15:13:50Z
  • Latest Release: v3.7.4

The GitHub repository (m-bain/whisperX) shows strong community adoption: 19,477 stars, 2,087 forks, and 101 contributors under a BSD-2-Clause license. The project is actively maintained (last commit: 2025-10-21), indicating ongoing development and bug fixes. A sizable contributor base suggests healthy community contributions and third-party integrations. Issues and pull requests attract community attention, and forks imply users adapting the tool for custom pipelines. Overall activity and contributor diversity point to a robust, production-ready open-source project.

Installation

Install via pip:

pip install -U whisperx
pip install -U git+https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX.git  # install latest from source
pip install -U openai-whisper  # recommended to ensure Whisper models are available
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg  # system dependency for audio I/O (Linux)
pip install pyannote.audio  # optional, for speaker diarization (requires PyTorch)

Key Features

  • Word-level timestamps via an explicit alignment stage to refine Whisper's token timings.
  • Optional speaker diarization integration (e.g., pyannote) to label segments by speaker.
  • Supports GPU acceleration with PyTorch for faster transcription and alignment.
  • Outputs common formats: JSON with word timings, SRT/VTT subtitle files, and plain transcripts.
  • Configurable segmentation and VAD to handle long-form audio and noisy recordings.

Community

WhisperX has a large, active community—19,477 GitHub stars, 2,087 forks, and 101 contributors—backed by frequent commits and issue activity. Community forks and contributions show real-world adoption and ecosystem integrations; speaker-diarization and subtitle export features receive particular attention. For diarization support and model usage questions, issues and discussions on the repo are the primary channels for community help.

Last Refreshed: 2026-01-09

Key Information

  • Category: Audio Tools
  • Type: AI Audio Tools Tool