This guy literally found a hack to cut OpenAI API costs by 33%...🤯
By speeding up audio before transcription.
I had to share this because it's brilliant in its simplicity.
And Yes, this really works:
Run your 40-minute video through ffmpeg at 3x speed. Upload the 13-minute version instead. Get the same transcription quality for much less money.
The logic is simple: OpenAI charges by minutes, so make the minutes shorter. Shorter audio → lower tokens → lower costs.
But here's the clever part: AI models handle sped-up audio surprisingly well. Just like our brains can read text with missing letters, These models fill in the gaps from faster speech.
His test results: - Original: 40 minutes (too long for gpt-4o-transcribe) - 3x speed: 13 minutes, perfect transcription - Fraction of the cost
One line of code. Thousands of dollars saved over time.
Sometimes the best hacks are hiding in plain sight.
This is the kind of creative problem-solving that saves real money.
What's the most unconventional cost-cutting trick you've discovered?
____ Connect with me → Shubham Saboo I share daily tips and opensource tutorials on AI Agents, RAG and MCP.
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