Support loading hf models

Signed-off-by: makaveli10 <vineet.suryan@collabora.com>

README.md

@@ -87,7 +87,7 @@ client = TranscriptionClient(
   9090,
   lang="en",
   translate=False,
-  model="small",
+  model="small",                                      # also support hf_model => `Systran/faster-whisper-small`
   use_vad=False,
   save_output_recording=True,                         # Only used for microphone input, False by Default
   output_recording_filename="./output_recording.wav", # Only used for microphone input

whisper_live/server.py

@@ -181,6 +181,7 @@ class TranscriptionServer:
                 }))
                 self.backend = BackendType.FASTER_WHISPER
 
+        try:
             if self.backend.is_faster_whisper():
                 if faster_whisper_custom_model_path is not None and os.path.exists(faster_whisper_custom_model_path):
                     logging.info(f"Using custom model {faster_whisper_custom_model_path}")
@@ -196,7 +197,10 @@ class TranscriptionServer:
                     use_vad=self.use_vad,
                     single_model=self.single_model,
                 )
+
                 logging.info("Running faster_whisper backend.")
+        except Exception as e:
+            return
 
         if client is None:
             raise ValueError(f"Backend type {self.backend.value} not recognised or not handled.")
@@ -785,9 +789,6 @@ class ServeClientFasterWhisper(ServeClientBase):
             "large-v3-turbo", "turbo"
         ]
 
-        if not os.path.exists(model):
-            self.model_size_or_path = self.check_valid_model(model)
-        else:
         self.model_size_or_path = model
         self.language = "en" if self.model_size_or_path.endswith("en") else language
         self.task = task
@@ -807,6 +808,7 @@ class ServeClientFasterWhisper(ServeClientBase):
             return
         logging.info(f"Using Device={device} with precision {self.compute_type}")
     
+        try:
             if single_model:
                 if ServeClientFasterWhisper.SINGLE_MODEL is None:
                     self.create_model(device)
@@ -815,6 +817,15 @@ class ServeClientFasterWhisper(ServeClientBase):
                     self.transcriber = ServeClientFasterWhisper.SINGLE_MODEL
             else:
                 self.create_model(device)
+        except Exception as e:
+            logging.error(f"Failed to load model: {e}")
+            self.websocket.send(json.dumps({
+                "uid": self.client_uid,
+                "status": "ERROR",
+                "message": f"Failed to load model: {str(self.model_size_or_path)}"
+            }))
+            self.websocket.close()
+            return
 
         self.use_vad = use_vad