--- title: Feed audio to Whisper in Rust without ever shelling out... description: ez-ffmpeg is a Rust crate that wraps FFmpeg's libav libraries in-process, eliminating the need to shell out to an ffmpeg subprocess for audio decoding. The... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/feed-audio-to-whisper-in-rust-without-ever-shelling-out-to-ffmpeg-p4in4qcfr twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Feed audio to Whisper in Rust without ever shelling out to ffmpeg | daily.dev og:description: ez-ffmpeg is a Rust crate that wraps FFmpeg's libav libraries in-process, eliminating the need to shell out to an ffmpeg subprocess for audio decoding. The... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/feed-audio-to-whisper-in-rust-without-ever-shelling-out-to-ffmpeg-p4in4qcfr og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/p4In4QCfr.png og:image:alt: Feed audio to Whisper in Rust without ever shelling out to ffmpeg og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Feed audio to Whisper in Rust without ever shelling out to ffmpeg **[Medium](https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js)** · 10 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary ez-ffmpeg is a Rust crate that wraps FFmpeg's libav libraries in-process, eliminating the need to shell out to an ffmpeg subprocess for audio decoding. The post demonstrates using its SampleExtractor API (v0.14) to decode an MP4's audio track into 16 kHz mono f32 PCM — exactly what Whisper-family models require — in a single call. A complete working example integrates this with whisper-rs 0.16 to transcribe a JFK speech clip, including real timing data (7.8 ms extraction, 635 ms inference on CPU). The post also documents breaking API changes in whisper-rs 0.16 that invalidate most older tutorials, and honestly discusses when to use pure-Rust alternatives (symphonia + rubato) versus an FFmpeg-backed approach based on codec coverage needs. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Writing Rust … by Hand. No LLMs.](https://daily.dev/posts/writing-rust-by-hand-no-llms--zu6hsaxdj) · Confessions of a Data Guy · 23 upvotes · 8 comments --- Tags: [#rust](https://daily.dev/tags/rust), [#speech-recognition](https://daily.dev/tags/speech-recognition), [#audio-processing](https://daily.dev/tags/audio-processing) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/feed-audio-to-whisper-in-rust-without-ever-shelling-out-to-ffmpeg-p4in4qcfr) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Feed audio to Whisper in Rust without ever shelling out to ffmpeg","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/feed-audio-to-whisper-in-rust-without-ever-shelling-out-to-ffmpeg-p4in4qcfr","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/feed-audio-to-whisper-in-rust-without-ever-shelling-out-to-ffmpeg-p4in4qcfr"},"datePublished":"2026-07-27T19:30:25.317Z","dateModified":"2026-07-27T19:56:07.145Z","description":"ez-ffmpeg is a Rust crate that wraps FFmpeg's libav libraries in-process, eliminating the need to shell out to an ffmpeg subprocess for audio decoding. 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