Allow setting output_dir to "" to disable writing files

whisper/transcribe.py

@@ -530,7 +530,7 @@ def valid_model_name(name):
     parser.add_argument("--model", default="turbo", type=valid_model_name, help="name of the Whisper model to use")
     parser.add_argument("--model_dir", type=str, default=None, help="the path to save model files; uses ~/.cache/whisper by default")
     parser.add_argument("--device", default="cuda" if torch.cuda.is_available() else "cpu", help="device to use for PyTorch inference")
-    parser.add_argument("--output_dir", "-o", type=str, default=".", help="directory to save the outputs")
+    parser.add_argument("--output_dir", "-o", type=str, default=".", help='directory to save the outputs (set to "" to disable writing files)')
     parser.add_argument("--output_format", "-f", type=str, default="all", choices=["txt", "vtt", "srt", "tsv", "json", "jsonl", "all"], help="format of the output file; if not specified, all available formats will be produced")
     parser.add_argument("--verbose", type=str2bool, default=True, help="whether to print out the progress and debug messages")
 
@@ -572,7 +572,8 @@ def valid_model_name(name):
     output_dir: str = args.pop("output_dir")
     output_format: str = args.pop("output_format")
     device: str = args.pop("device")
-    os.makedirs(output_dir, exist_ok=True)
+    if output_dir:
+        os.makedirs(output_dir, exist_ok=True)
 
     if model_name.endswith(".en") and args["language"] not in {"en", "English"}:
         if args["language"] is not None:

whisper/utils.py

@@ -91,6 +91,9 @@ def __init__(self, output_dir: str):
     def __call__(
         self, result: dict, audio_path: str, options: Optional[dict] = None, **kwargs
     ):
+        if not self.output_dir:
+            return
+
         audio_basename = os.path.basename(audio_path)
         audio_basename = os.path.splitext(audio_basename)[0]
         output_path = os.path.join(