Bug#1128084: ffmpeg: Enable whisper support using whisper.cpp?

On Sun, 16 Aug 2026 15:07:08 +0200 Jonas Smedegaard <[email protected]>
wrote:
> > > > > > whisper.cpp migrated to testing 2 weeks ago.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Please reconsider enabling support for it here.

ICYMI, since the original request last February, ffmpeg support has
been enabled in the whisper.cpp package itself.

This was introduced mid-June in whisper.cpp 1.8.6+dfsg-2.

We hadn't enabled it sooner because the licensing of the related code
in whisper.cpp was not clear. We raised it to upstream, who kindly
rewrote this part [1].

So, it means that the requested feature could already be used the other
way around: using whisper.cpp to transcribe from ffmpeg-supported
formats.

Given the release constraints raised in this bug, it seems to me that
we should rather recommend this usage (whisper.cpp using ffmpeg),
rather than having ffmpeg depending on whisper.cpp (which, while more
stable than llama.cpp, is still a relatively recent library).

Anyhow, the potential cyclic dependency should may be also be
considered, as the whisper.cpp package now depends on ffmpeg.

> > As we (as in the release team) are trying to reduce the size of the
> > key package set, I am not willingly adding new packages to that set
that
> > have RC bugs open and unanswered for 4 months.
> 
> Oh! I was unaware that this issue involves RC bugs ignored for 4
months
> and agree that is a sensible bar to set. Which bugs is it?

Other people in the AI team know these issues much better, but my
understanding is that many such bugs are usually coming from the main
whisper.cpp dependency, ggml (also used by llama.cpp), and especially
some of its backends (ROCm).

If there is an issue specifically with whisper.cpp that we may have
missed, please let me know or raise it in the bug tracking system.

Cheers,

Mathieu

[1] https://github.com/ggml-org/whisper.cpp/issues/3838

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