Whisper API: a) Timecodes; b) how good is open-source vs API?

[Foxalabs]

Revised (see below for how to get timecode from the api), the advantage of using the API over self hosting is performance and model size, if you wish to run a very capable model from a low power device, offloading that computational task to a remote, enterprise class compute facility is an attractive option. If you have local compute of sufficient power then local use is fine.