media_transcribe

Transcribe the speech in a video or audio file and write the timed transcript to a JSON file, with word-level start/end times in seconds; returns the file's path and its segment and word counts. Commonly useful for footage with speakers (talking head, interview), where the word times let you cut on a line. A transcript marks only speech; the gaps are not necessarily silent (music, score, applause).

MCP tool	media_transcribe
CLI	dapi media transcribe <path>

Input

Field	Type	CLI	Description
path	string, required	<path>	absolute file path or URL (works with or without an open project), or a library path like b-roll/clip.mp4 (needs an open project)
output	string	-o, --output <path>	absolute path to write the transcript JSON to (default: a fresh file under the system temp dir)

Times are in seconds of source/content time. An output naming an existing directory gets a fresh dapi-transcript-*.json inside it. The whole asset is transcribed once per app session (cached in memory, keyed by file content; an app restart or an edited file re-transcribes). Every call writes the file again, so a cached transcript returns at once.

Output

One JSON object, where the transcript went and how large it is:

{
  path:     string;   // absolute path of the transcript JSON
  segments: number;   // segments in the transcript
  words:    number;   // words across all segments
}

The file holds the transcript as indented JSON, so it searches line by line: a grep for a phrase lands on its segment's text, with the word times in the lines after it. Search it (grep, jq) or read the part you need rather than loading it whole — a long recording's word timings run to tens of thousands of tokens.

{
  segments: Array<{
    text:  string;      // spoken words only (no silence markers)
    words: Array<{ text: string; start: number; end: number }>;  // seconds
  }>;
}

Errors

Fails when the path can't be resolved, the asset is not a video/audio asset, or no speech is detected in the audio at all (No speech detected).