How to extract closed caption transcript from YouTube video

Question

Is it possible to extract the closed caption transcript from YouTube videos   We have over 200 webcasts on YouTube and each is at least one hour long  YouTube has closed caption for all videos but it seems users have no way to get it   I tried the URL in this blog but it does not work with our videos   http   googlesystem blogspot com 2010 10 download-youtube-captions html

User · Accepted Answer

Following document says only the owner of the channel can do this via standard youtube interface  https   developers google com youtube 2 0 developers guide protocol captions hl en  Cheap fix  You can click on the  interactive transscript  button - and copy the content this way  Of course you lose the milliseconds this way   Extremely cheap fix  A shared youtube account -  so that multiple people can edit and upload caption files   Challenging solution  The youtube API allows downloading and uploading of caption files via HTTP    You may write a youtube API application to provide a browser user interface for uploading or downloading for ANY user or particular users   Here is an example project for this in java    http   apiblog youtube com 2011 01 youtube-captions-uploader-web-app html  Here is very simple example of a working upload for everybody      http   yt-captions-uploader appspot com

User · Answer

You can download the streaming subtitles from YouTube with KeepSubs DownSub and SaveSubs    You can choose from the Automatic Transcript or author supplied close captions  It also offers the possibility to automatically translate the English subtitles into other languages using Google Translate

User · Answer

Another option is to use youtube-dl  youtube-dl --skip-download --write-auto-sub  youtube url  The default format is vtt and the other available format is ttml  --sub-format ttml   --write-sub        Write subtitle file  --write-auto-sub        Write automatically generated subtitle file  YouTube only   --all-subs        Download all the available subtitles of the video  --list-subs        List all available subtitles for the video  --sub-format FORMAT        Subtitle format  accepts formats preference  for example   quot srt quot  or  quot ass srt best quot   --sub-lang LANGS        Languages of the subtitles to download  optional  separated by commas  use --list-subs for available language tags  You can use ffmpeg to convert the subtitle file to another format  ffmpeg -i input vtt output srt  This is what the VTT subtitles look like  WEBVTT Kind  captions Language  en  00 00 01 429 -- gt  00 00 04 249 align start position 0   ladies lt 00 00 02 429 gt  lt c gt  and lt  c gt  lt 00 00 02 580 gt  lt c gt  gentlemen lt  c gt  lt c colorE5E5E5 gt  lt 00 00 02 879 gt  lt c gt  I d lt  c gt  lt  c gt  lt c colorCCCCCC gt  lt 00 00 03 870 gt  lt c gt  like lt  c gt  lt  c gt  lt c colorE5E5E5 gt  lt 00 00 04 020 gt  lt c gt  to lt  c gt  lt 00 00 04 110 gt  lt c gt  thank lt  c gt  lt  c gt   00 00 04 249 -- gt  00 00 04 259 align start position 0  ladies and gentlemen lt c colorE5E5E5 gt  I d lt  c gt  lt c colorCCCCCC gt  like lt  c gt  lt c colorE5E5E5 gt  to thank   lt  c gt   00 00 04 259 -- gt  00 00 05 930 align start position 0  ladies and gentlemen lt c colorE5E5E5 gt  I d lt  c gt  lt c colorCCCCCC gt  like lt  c gt  lt c colorE5E5E5 gt  to thank you lt 00 00 04 440 gt  lt c gt  for lt  c gt  lt 00 00 04 620 gt  lt c gt  coming lt  c gt  lt 00 00 05 069 gt  lt c gt  tonight lt  c gt  lt 00 00 05 190 gt  lt c gt  especially lt  c gt  lt  c gt  lt c colorCCCCCC gt  lt 00 00 05 609 gt  lt c gt  at lt  c gt  lt  c gt   00 00 05 930 -- gt  00 00 05 940 align start position 0  you lt c colorE5E5E5 gt  for coming tonight especially lt  c gt  lt c colorCCCCCC gt  at   lt  c gt   00 00 05 940 -- gt  00 00 07 730 align start position 0  you lt c colorE5E5E5 gt  for coming tonight especially lt  c gt  lt c colorCCCCCC gt  at such lt 00 00 06 180 gt  lt c gt  short lt  c gt  lt 00 00 06 690 gt  lt c gt  notice lt  c gt  lt  c gt   00 00 07 730 -- gt  00 00 07 740 align start position 0  such short notice   00 00 07 740 -- gt  00 00 09 620 align start position 0  such short notice I m lt 00 00 08 370 gt  lt c gt  sure lt  c gt  lt c colorE5E5E5 gt  lt 00 00 08 580 gt  lt c gt  mr  lt  c gt  lt 00 00 08 820 gt  lt c gt  Irving lt  c gt  lt 00 00 09 000 gt  lt c gt  will lt  c gt  lt 00 00 09 120 gt  lt c gt  fill lt  c gt  lt 00 00 09 300 gt  lt c gt  you lt  c gt  lt 00 00 09 389 gt  lt c gt  in lt  c gt  lt 00 00 09 420 gt  lt c gt  on lt  c gt  lt  c gt   00 00 09 620 -- gt  00 00 09 630 align start position 0  I m sure lt c colorE5E5E5 gt  mr  Irving will fill you in on   lt  c gt   00 00 09 630 -- gt  00 00 11 030 align start position 0  I m sure lt c colorE5E5E5 gt  mr  Irving will fill you in on the lt 00 00 09 750 gt  lt c gt  circumstances lt  c gt  lt 00 00 10 440 gt  lt c gt  that s lt  c gt  lt 00 00 10 620 gt  lt c gt  brought lt  c gt  lt 00 00 10 920 gt  lt c gt  us lt  c gt  lt  c gt   00 00 11 030 -- gt  00 00 11 040 align start position 0   lt c colorE5E5E5 gt the circumstances that s brought us   lt  c gt   Here are the same subtitles without the part at the top of the file and without tags  00 00 01 429 -- gt  00 00 04 249 align start position 0   ladies and gentlemen I d like to thank  00 00 04 249 -- gt  00 00 04 259 align start position 0  ladies and gentlemen I d like to thank   00 00 04 259 -- gt  00 00 05 930 align start position 0  ladies and gentlemen I d like to thank you for coming tonight especially at  00 00 05 930 -- gt  00 00 05 940 align start position 0  you for coming tonight especially at   00 00 05 940 -- gt  00 00 07 730 align start position 0  you for coming tonight especially at such short notice  00 00 07 730 -- gt  00 00 07 740 align start position 0  such short notice   00 00 07 740 -- gt  00 00 09 620 align start position 0  such short notice I m sure mr  Irving will fill you in on  00 00 09 620 -- gt  00 00 09 630 align start position 0  I m sure mr  Irving will fill you in on   00 00 09 630 -- gt  00 00 11 030 align start position 0  I m sure mr  Irving will fill you in on the circumstances that s brought us  You can see that each subtitle text is repeated three times  There is a new subtitle text every eighth line  3rd  11th  19th  and 27th   This converts the VTT subtitles to a simpler format  sed  1     d    vtt    remove the part at the top sed  s  lt    gt    gt   g     remove tags awk -F   NR 8  1 printf quot  s  quot   1 NR 8  3    print each new subtitle text and its start time without milliseconds  This is what the output of the command above looks like  00 00 01 ladies and gentlemen I d like to thank 00 00 04 you for coming tonight especially at 00 00 05 such short notice 00 00 07 I m sure mr  Irving will fill you in on 00 00 09 the circumstances that s brought us  This prints the closed captions of a video in the simplified format  cap   cd  tmp rm -f --   vtt youtube-dl --skip-download --write-auto-sub --  quot  1 quot  sed  1     d  --   vtt sed  s  lt    gt    gt   g  awk -F   NR 8  1 printf quot  s  quot   1 NR 8  3   The command below downloads the captions of all videos on a channel  When there is an error like Unable to extract video data  -i  --ignore-errors  causes youtube-dl to skip the video instead of exiting with an error  youtube-dl -i --skip-download --write-auto-sub -o    upload date s   title s   id s   ext s  https   www youtube com channel  channelid for f in   vtt do sed  1     d   quot  f quot  sed  s  lt    gt    gt   g  awk -F   NR 8  1 printf quot  s  quot   1 NR 8  3  gt  quot   f  vtt  quot  done

User · Answer

You can view copy download a timecoded xml file of a youtube s closed captions file by accessing  http   video google com timedtext lang  LANGUAGE  amp v  YOUTUBE VIDEO IDENTIFIER    For example http   video google com timedtext lang pt amp v WSVKbw7LC2w  NOTE  this method does not download autogenerated closed captions  even if you get the language right  maybe there s a special code for autogenerated languages

User · Answer

There is a free python tool called YouTube transcript API  You can use it in scripts or as a command line tool   pip install youtube transcript api

User · Answer

I just got this easily done manually by opening the transcript at the beginning of the video and left-clicking and dragging at the time 00 00 marker with the shift key pressed over a few lines at the beginning   I then advanced the video to near the end  When the video stopped  I clicked the end of the last sentence whilst holding down the shift key once more  With CTRL-C I copied the text to the clipboard and pasted it into an editor   Done   Caveat  Be sure to have no RDP-Windows sharing the clipboard or Software such as Teamviewer is running at the same time as this procedure will overflow their buffers where a large amount of text is copied

User · Answer

Choose Open Transcript from the     dropdown to the right of the vote up down and share links   This will open a Transcript scrolling div on the right side   You can then use Copy  Note that you cannot use Select All but need to click the top line  then scroll to the bottom using the scroll thumb  and then shift-click on the last line   Note that you can also search within this text using the normal web page search

User · Answer

Obligatory  this is probably an internal youtube com interface and might break at any time   Instead of linking to another tool that does this  here s an answer to the question of  quot how to do this quot  Use fiddler or your browser devtools  e g  Chrome  to inspect the youtube com HTTP traffic  and there s a response from  api timedtext that contains the closed caption info as XML  It seems that a response like this       lt p t  quot 0 quot  d  quot 5430 quot  w  quot 1 quot  gt           lt s p  quot 2 quot  ac  quot 136 quot  gt we amp  39 ve lt  s gt           lt s t  quot 780 quot  ac  quot 252 quot  gt  got lt  s gt       lt  p gt       lt p t  quot 2280 quot  d  quot 7170 quot  w  quot 1 quot  gt           lt s ac  quot 243 quot  gt we amp  39 re lt  s gt           lt s t  quot 810 quot  ac  quot 233 quot  gt  going lt  s gt       lt  p gt   means at time 0 is the word we ve and at time 0 780 is the word got and at time 2280 810 is the word going  etc  This time is in milliseconds so for time 3090 you d want to append  amp t 3 to the URL  You can use any tool to stitch together the XML into something readable  but here s my Power BI Desktop script to find words like  quot privilege quot   let     Source   Xml Tables File Contents  quot C  Download body xml quot           quot Changed Type quot    Table TransformColumnTypes Source    quot Attribute format quot   Int64 Type         body     quot Changed Type quot  0  body       p   body 0  p         quot Changed Type1 quot    Table TransformColumnTypes p    quot Attribute t quot   Int64 Type     quot Attribute d quot   Int64 Type     quot Attribute w quot   Int64 Type     quot Attribute a quot   Int64 Type     quot Attribute p quot   Int64 Type           quot Expanded s quot    Table ExpandTableColumn   quot Changed Type1 quot    quot s quot     quot Attribute ac quot    quot Attribute p quot    quot Attribute t quot    quot Element Text quot      quot s Attribute ac quot    quot s Attribute p quot    quot s Attribute t quot    quot s Element Text quot           quot Changed Type2 quot    Table TransformColumnTypes   quot Expanded s quot     quot s Attribute t quot   Int64 Type           quot Removed Other Columns quot    Table SelectColumns   quot Changed Type2 quot    quot s Attribute t quot    quot s Element Text quot    quot Attribute t quot           quot Replaced Value quot    Table ReplaceValue   quot Removed Other Columns quot  null 0 Replacer ReplaceValue   quot s Attribute t quot           quot Filtered Rows quot    Table SelectRows   quot Replaced Value quot   each    quot s Element Text quot    lt  gt  null         quot Added Custom quot    Table AddColumn   quot Filtered Rows quot    quot Time quot   each    quot Attribute t quot        quot s Attribute t quot           quot Filtered Rows1 quot    Table SelectRows   quot Added Custom quot   each     quot s Element Text quot      quot  privilege quot  or    quot s Element Text quot      quot  privileged quot  or    quot s Element Text quot      quot  privileges quot  or    quot s Element Text quot      quot privilege quot  or    quot s Element Text quot      quot privileges quot    in       quot Filtered Rows1 quot

User · Answer

With the YouTube video updated as of June 2020 it s very straight forward   select on the 3 dots next to like dislike buttons to open further menu options select  add translations  select language click autogenerate if needed click Actions   Download   You will get and  sbv file

User · Answer

Here s how to get the transcript of a YouTube video  when available     Go to YouTube and open the video of your choice   Click on the  More actions  button  3 horizontal dots  located next to the Share button  Click  Open transcript    Although the syntax may be a little goofy this is a pretty good solution   Source  http   ccm net faq 40644-youtube-how-to-get-the-transcript-of-a-video

[youtube] How to extract closed caption transcript from YouTube video?

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