# Any Video to Transcript (AI): TikTok, Facebook, X, YouTube (`blue59/video-transcript-ai`) Actor

Transcripts for TikTok, Facebook, X/Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube and 1,000+ sites. Uses platform captions when they exist, built-in Whisper AI when they don't — no API key needed. Quality-gated: bad results are never returned or charged.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/blue59/video-transcript-ai.md
- **Developed by:** [Blue59](https://apify.com/blue59) (community)
- **Categories:**
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $5.00 / 1,000 caption transcripts

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Any Video → Transcript (AI)

**Paste TikTok, Facebook, X/Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube or almost any video URL — get the full transcript.** No API key needed.

Most short-form videos have no captions at all. This Actor uses the platform's captions when they exist (fast, cheap) and transcribes the audio with Whisper large-v3-turbo when they don't. Every result passes a quality gate: empty, truncated or garbage transcripts are reported as failures and **never charged**.

### Supported sources

| Platform | Captions | AI transcription |
|---|---|---|
| TikTok | rarely available → AI | ✅ |
| Facebook (videos, reels, watch) | sometimes | ✅ |
| X / Twitter | – | ✅ |
| YouTube (video / channel / playlist) | ✅ manual + auto | ✅ |
| Vimeo, Dailymotion, Twitch clips, Reddit videos, Bilibili… (1,000+ sites via yt-dlp) | when present | ✅ |
| Instagram | only posts viewable without login | best effort |

### Output

```json
{
  "platform": "tiktok",
  "id": "7106594312292453675",
  "url": "https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675",
  "title": "how many frogs did you find?",
  "author": "tiktok",
  "duration": 24,
  "language": "auto",
  "source": "ai:groq-whisper-turbo",
  "charCount": 312,
  "aiMinutes": 1,
  "transcript": "..."
}
```

`source` tells you where the text came from: `caption:manual`, `caption:auto` or `ai:groq-whisper-turbo`.

### Pricing (pay per event)

- **Caption transcript** — charged when the platform already has captions.
- **AI transcript** + **AI minute** — charged only when AI transcription succeeds; minutes are counted per started minute of audio.
- **Bring your own Groq key** (optional) — pay only the small per-result fee, no per-minute charge. Free keys at [console.groq.com](https://console.groq.com).

Set **Max minutes per video** to cap cost on long videos (default 60).

### Input

| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| `videoUrls` | One or more video URLs (YouTube channels/playlists are expanded up to `maxItems`) |
| `aiTranscription` | Use AI when no captions (default on) |
| `languageHint` | Spoken language code (e.g. `en`, `zh`, `ja`) — improves accuracy on short clips |
| `maxMinutes` | Skip AI for videos longer than this |
| `groqApiKey` | Optional: your own key (cheaper) |
| `preferredLanguages` | Caption track priority |

### Who uses this

- Content research & competitor analysis across TikTok / Reels / X
- Feeding RAG, summarization and LLM pipelines with clean text
- Subtitling, translation, accessibility
- Social listening: turn viral videos into searchable text

### Notes

Datacenter IPs are sometimes blocked by video platforms — keep Apify Proxy enabled (default). Failures are classified (proxy / rate-limit / blocked / network / other) in the run report so you can see *why* something failed, not just that it did.

# Actor input Schema

## `videoUrls` (type: `array`):

TikTok, Facebook, X/Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube (video / channel / playlist), Dailymotion and 1,000+ other sites supported by yt-dlp. One URL per line. Instagram works only when the post is viewable without login.

## `aiTranscription` (type: `boolean`):

Built-in Whisper (large-v3-turbo) transcribes any video that has no caption track. Charged per video + per audio minute. Turn off to use platform captions only.

## `languageHint` (type: `string`):

ISO code of the spoken language, e.g. en, zh, ja, es. Leave empty for auto-detect. Setting it improves accuracy for short clips.

## `maxMinutes` (type: `integer`):

Videos longer than this are skipped for AI transcription (cost guard). Platform captions are not limited.

## `groqApiKey` (type: `string`):

Bring your own key from console.groq.com and pay only a small per-result fee here (no per-minute charge). Used for this run only, never stored.

## `preferredLanguages` (type: `array`):

Which caption track to prefer when several exist.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Upper limit when a YouTube channel/playlist is expanded.

## `minChars` (type: `integer`):

Results shorter than this are treated as failures (not charged).

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Apify Proxy is recommended; some platforms block datacenter IPs.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675",
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk"
  ],
  "aiTranscription": true,
  "maxMinutes": 60,
  "preferredLanguages": [
    "en",
    "zh-Hant",
    "zh-TW",
    "zh-Hans",
    "zh",
    "ja",
    "ko",
    "es",
    "fr",
    "de",
    "pt"
  ],
  "maxItems": 50,
  "minChars": 20,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `transcripts` (type: `string`):

所有結果(JSON)/ All results as JSON

## `transcriptsCsv` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "videoUrls": [
        "https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675",
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("blue59/video-transcript-ai").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "videoUrls": [
        "https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675",
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk",
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("blue59/video-transcript-ai").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675",
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk"
  ]
}' |
apify call blue59/video-transcript-ai --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,blue59/video-transcript-ai"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/G6c2ofcbnvAskIOSE/builds/Pfy9qqPcR5a6I3knj/openapi.json