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Installation & Usage

Usage

Whisper ASR Webservice now available on Docker Hub. You can find the latest version of this repository on docker hub for CPU and GPU.

Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/r/onerahmet/openai-whisper-asr-webservice

docker pull onerahmet/openai-whisper-asr-webservice:latest
docker run -d -p 9000:9000 \
  -e ASR_MODEL=base \
  -e ASR_ENGINE=openai_whisper \
  onerahmet/openai-whisper-asr-webservice:latest

GPU passthrough does not work on macOS due to fundamental design limitations of Docker. Docker actually runs containers within a LinuxVM on macOS. If you wish to run GPU-accelerated containers, I'm afraid Linux is your only option.

The :latest image tag provides both amd64 and arm64 architectures:

docker pull onerahmet/openai-whisper-asr-webservice:latest
docker run -d -p 9000:9000 \
  -e ASR_MODEL=base \
  -e ASR_ENGINE=openai_whisper \
  onerahmet/openai-whisper-asr-webservice:latest

docker pull onerahmet/openai-whisper-asr-webservice:latest-gpu
docker run -d --gpus all -p 9000:9000 \
  -e ASR_MODEL=base \
  -e ASR_ENGINE=openai_whisper \
  onerahmet/openai-whisper-asr-webservice:latest-gpu

Environment Variables

The following environment variables can be used to configure the service:

  • ASR_MODEL: Whisper model to use (tiny, base, small, medium, large) [default: base]
  • ASR_ENGINE: ASR engine to use (openai_whisper, faster_whisper) [default: openai_whisper]
  • ASR_MODEL_PATH: Custom path to store/load model files [optional]

Interactive Swagger API documentation is available at http://localhost:9000/docs

Swagger UI

Cache

The ASR model is downloaded each time you start the container. Using the large model can take significant time to download. To reduce container startup time by avoiding repeated downloads, you can persist the cache directory to local storage. The model will then be loaded from the cache instead of being downloaded again on subsequent container starts.

Important: Using a persistent cache will prevent you from receiving model updates.

docker run -d -p 9000:9000 \
  -v $PWD/cache:/root/.cache \
  onerahmet/openai-whisper-asr-webservice:latest

docker run -d -p 9000:9000 \
  -e ASR_MODEL_PATH=/data/whisper \
  -v $PWD/cache:/data/whisper \
  onerahmet/openai-whisper-asr-webservice:latest