Prerequisites and environment check

Before you install anything, it is worth finding out where the machine stands. Live Caption Pro gives you a single command for this, the environment check (check-environment): it goes through every prerequisite and tells you what is there, what is missing and which command fills the gap. This chapter first lists what you need, then how the check works.

What runs where

Service	Windows	macOS
account service	x64; the database (PostgreSQL) in Docker Desktop	Apple Silicon; the database is PostgreSQL installed with Homebrew
translator	x64, with an NVIDIA card	Apple Silicon (Metal acceleration)
voice service	x64, with an NVIDIA card (CUDA)	Apple Silicon
caption service	x64	Apple Silicon (Metal acceleration)

The services do not run on an Intel-based Mac. They also run on Linux (x64), installed as system services there – the Running as a service chapter covers that.

What you always need

• .NET 10 SDK – the runnable package of each service is built with it on the first start.
• PowerShell 7 (pwsh) – the launchers run on it. On Windows the built-in Windows PowerShell 5.1 is enough; on macOS no launcher starts without PowerShell 7, and it tells you so.
• Python 3.10–3.12 for the voice service's engine. Python 3.13 and the Microsoft Store edition do not work; on macOS 3.12 is the default.
• PostgreSQL (major version 14 or later) for the account service's database. You do not need to install it up front: on Windows the bundled launcher runs it in a Docker container, on macOS with the Homebrew postgresql@18 package.
• An internet connection for the first run – to download the models and runtimes. After that everything works on the machine, offline.
• On Windows, the winget package manager: the .NET SDK, PowerShell 7 and Python are installed through it. Windows 11 ships with it; on Windows 10 and the LTSC editions it has to be installed once by hand, because this is the one item the environment check cannot fill in.

Graphics card and memory

The translator, the caption service and the voice service are fast with a graphics card. On Windows that means an NVIDIA card; on macOS the shared (unified) memory and Metal acceleration of Apple Silicon do the work. Without a graphics card the caption service and the translator switch to the processor on their own – more slowly, and they say so.

There is no official memory minimum, only measured figures. On an RTX 5090 machine the three model services used 22.3 GB of video memory together. Separately: the translator took 16.7 GB with the large (12b) model and 5.0 GB with the small (4b) one; the voice service 2.3 GB; the caption service sizes itself to the free video memory. If the card is too small, the services can be spread over several machines – see the Remote GPU server, several workstations chapter.

The downloads, roughly: a Whisper model 0.1–3 GB, the translation model (TranslateGemma) 7–17 GB per variant, the voice engine's environment about 3 GB, the voice model (XTTS-v2) about 1.8 GB. Leave enough free disk space.

Running the environment check

In the root of the repository, check-environment.cmd starts it on Windows and check-environment.command on macOS – a double-click works too. The twin ending in -langhu (check-environment-langhu.cmd) always writes in Hungarian; the plain one follows the machine's language.

check-environment.cmd                     # report: what is there, what is missing, which command
check-environment.cmd -Components voice   # only the voice service's prerequisites
check-environment.cmd -Fix                # fill in: asks item by item and does it
check-environment.cmd -Fix -Yes           # fill in without questions: yes to everything

The report changes nothing: it does not install, download or create folders – you can safely run it on someone else's machine. The markers in the table:

Marker	Meaning
+	present
!	missing, and the component will not even start without it
-	missing, but optional
?	cannot be decided, because the check itself failed

At the end the exit code is 0 if every required item is present, and 1 if any is missing.

The -Components switch narrows the check: common (applies to everything), captionserver (caption service), captionclient (the batch captioning client), translator, voice (voice service), cable (virtual audio cable), account (the account service's database). Several can be given, separated by commas.

Filling in: the -Fix switch

-Fix switches to fill-in mode: for every missing item it asks whether to install it, and tells you in advance how large the download is and whether administrator rights are needed. Only the step that needs administrator rights asks for them (on Windows the virtual audio cable and WSL; the Docker Desktop installer asks by itself) – everything else is installed as your own user, so Python, the environment and the models end up in your profile. If you decline the approval, that item is skipped and the rest goes ahead.

-Yes says yes to everything, licences included: the winget agreements, Docker Desktop's, and the CPML licence of the voice model (XTTS-v2) – the latter allows non-commercial use only. Only give it if you are aware of this. -Yes on its own, without -Fix, is a usage error.

Whatever the fill-in cannot do by itself, it prints the command for: a missing winget on Windows, and on macOS the items to install with Homebrew (for example brew install --cask powershell, brew install blackhole-2ch), because those ask for an administrator password. The translation model is not downloaded here either, but during installation – see the Installation and removal chapter.

Windows and macOS: the differences

• Virtual audio cable: VB-CABLE on Windows, BlackHole on macOS. It is only needed for the cable audio source used in calls and for outgoing interpreting, so it is optional. On macOS, after installing BlackHole the audio system (or the machine) may need a restart; the check reports this separately.
• Docker and WSL: on Windows they are required when the account service runs on this machine and its database is the machine's own container. WSL is what Docker Desktop builds on; if processor virtualization is switched off in the BIOS, Docker Desktop will not start, and the check warns about it. On macOS neither Docker nor WSL is needed: the database runs natively.
• Remote account service: if the account service runs on another machine, or uses an external database, Docker and WSL are optional on this machine, and -Fix -Yes does not install them.

The launchers check too

Every service launcher uses the same inventory, only for its own component and quietly: the table appears only when something is missing. So whatever is green in the environment check's report will not ask again at start-up.

The next step is Installation and removal.