The four services and their ports
The four background services of Live Caption Pro: what each one does, which port it listens on, and the order they start in.
Four background services work behind the LiveCaption app. They can all run on one machine, but they can also be spread out: the services that need a graphics card on a powerful machine, the rest wherever is convenient. This chapter gives an overview of what each one does and where it can be reached.
The four services
| Service | What it does | Does it need a graphics card |
|---|---|---|
account service (accountserver) |
the single owner of users, roles and keys; the other services ask it who may do what | no; it needs a PostgreSQL database |
translator (translatorserver) |
translates sentence by sentence, with a translation model running on the machine | yes |
voice service (voiceserver) |
speaks the translation, optionally in the speaker's cloned voice | recommended |
caption service (captionserver) |
splits the audio into sentences and transcribes it, with the Whisper model | yes |
Two ports per service
Every service listens on two ports:
- the service port is where the clients connect – the LiveCaption app and the command-line clients;
- the control port serves the service's web admin interface: status, settings, logs, network.
| Service | Service port | Control port | The web interface on the machine |
|---|---|---|---|
| account service | 8100 | 8101 | http://127.0.0.1:8101/admin |
| translator | 8080 | 8081 | http://127.0.0.1:8081/admin |
| voice service | 8090 | 8091 | http://127.0.0.1:8091/admin |
| caption service | 5111 | 5112 | http://127.0.0.1:5112/admin |
The ports are defaults. The two ports of the translator, the voice service and the caption service can be changed on the Settings page of the web interface (it takes effect after saving and a restart) or with a switch at start-up (--port, --control-port); those of the account service only with a switch at start-up. The Network page only shows where the service can be reached – nothing can be changed there. If a port is taken, the service does not start and tells you what is using it.
The start-up order
The order is fixed: account service → translator and voice service → caption service.
- The account service comes first because the others get from it who may access them: without its address they do not even start.
- The caption service comes last because it sizes itself to the free video memory and takes nearly all of it; started first, it would take the room of the translator and the voice service.
The daily launcher keeps this order on its own; the details are in the Daily start and stop chapter.
One machine or several
- Everything on one machine: the simplest layout; LiveCaption reaches the services at
127.0.0.1. - One powerful machine on the network: the translator, the voice service and the caption service run on the machine with the graphics card, and the workstations only run LiveCaption. A workstation reaches the service ports over the network, so the firewall has to allow them, and every workstation needs its own key.
The steps for a multi-machine layout are in the Remote GPU server, several workstations chapter and in the One GPU machine on the network guide.