I keep a number of different Audacity versions installed as “portable”, following @steve 's instructions here. I wonder if there is a way to also keep different versions of OpenVINO installations likewise so that a specific version of Audacity always runs with the suitable version of Open VINO.. ?
I mainly need the transcription part of it. A first attempt with my only “properly” installed version 3.4.2 didn’t produce anything useful, so I hope to get better results with more recent versions of Audacity + OpenVINO plugins.
Hi @Samse26, sure it should be possible. If you install the plugins into a particular portable Audacity folder , then running Audacity from that folder should load the corresponding version of the plugins.
Note that the latest release of these plugins, Release v3.7.1-R4.2 · intel/openvino-plugins-ai-audacity · GitHub, are compatible with any Audacity version >= v3.7.0.
If you’re running an older version of Audacity, then you’ll need to match it with a compatible release here: Releases · intel/openvino-plugins-ai-audacity · GitHub
Also, as a side-note / tip. If you’re only interested in transcription, you only need to have the installer download / populate openvino-models for one installation… and then just manually copy the folder into the other portable folders(might save some download time).
Thanks for the prompt reply. Just to get it clear: I download the Windows installer *.exe (I didn’t find a zip file) and then set the installation folder to where my desired version of Audacity.exe resides?
Are then all the required files contained in the “openvino-models” subfolder (which I found in my “regular” installation)?
Just to get it clear: I download the Windows installer *.exe (I didn’t find a zip file) and then set the installation folder to where my desired version of Audacity.exe resides?
Correct, you would need to run the installer and manually point it at the folder containing the portable version of Audacity.
Are then all the required files contained in the “openvino-models” subfolder (which I found in my “regular” installation)?
Not all of the required files are stored in “openvino-models” subfolder, only the models. There are a bunch of other files (mainly DLLs) that get installed into Audacity folder outside of the models folder. You’ll still need to install these for each portable folder, but for this is recommended to use the installer (you can choose ‘no models’, as this will skip the model download – the part you’ll be taking care of manually by copying “openvino-models”).
I see. How do I know if I need to download new models (and cannot just copy the content of “openvino-models”) for a different Audacity version? Or are they identical, and if so, across which range of versions ?
It’s not so easy to tell, unfortunately. I am only giving this tip to copy as I know that transcription models didn’t really change at all across the various plugin releases. If you’re interested in other models, and you want to run them on different versions of the plugins, the recommendation would be to have the installer take care of downloading the right version.
By the way, just curious, what’s the reason why you’d want so many different versions of Audacity running? Would they really excel at different things?
I’ve been using Audacity since the v2.x times and keep still some old projects around. I’m rather conservative in adopting new versions, and therefore don’t want to have old projects be “upgraded” with a new version, without a way back. Therefore rather keep the old versions around…