OpenAI Whisper; FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified

Question

I wanted to check out OpenAI whisper and see if I could find some personal applications for it. I went on github and followed the instructions to set it up. My primary system is on Windows 11 and I get this error; "FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified" when trying to run the test script on my system.

Things I did to troubleshoot:

• Disabled MS defender and all antivirus.
• Moved the script and audio file to the same directory.
• Moved the script and audio file to various directories.
• Ran VSCODE with admin privileges.
• Tried the "command-line usage".
• Tried everything above on a second system that run windows 10.
• The script ran on a third system with Ubuntu installed.

I think this might be a permission issue from windows but I can't seem to resolve it, any suggestion will be greatly appreciated. I would prefer not to use the linux system because it lacks a dGPU.

Answer 1

I initially ran into this same problem and it was entirely related to installing ffmpeg. You need to install it as a python module (with pip install ffmpeg) and from here (https://ffmpeg.org/download.html) while following these instructions: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/how-to-install-ffmpeg-on-windows/

Answer 2

It is happening due to the ffmpeg not working correctly or failed to load. Try running

ffmpeg -version

It should display something like this:-

If you get this, it means your ffmpeg is working fine. If you are not getting these details then try installing using below command. Hopefully it should work.

conda install -c conda-forge ffmpeg

After installing via conda it works for me: