Youtube Transcript Scraper

Extract transcripts and captions from YouTube videos with language selection support. Returns timestamped segments, full concatenated text, and basic video metadata.

What does it do?

This scraper extracts transcripts (subtitles/captions) from YouTube videos. It supports both manually created and auto-generated captions, with optional language selection and translation.

For each video, you get:

• Timestamped transcript segments (start time, duration, text)
• Full concatenated transcript as plain text
• Transcript language and type (manual vs auto-generated)
• List of all available transcript languages
• Basic video metadata (title, channel, views, duration, thumbnail)

Input

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
videoUrls	array	Yes	—	YouTube video URLs, short links, or plain video IDs
language	string	No	"" (auto)	Preferred transcript language code (e.g., en, es, fr)
includeAutoGenerated	boolean	No	true	Include auto-generated captions when manual ones aren't available

Supported URL formats

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
• https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID
• https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID
• https://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID
• Plain video ID (11 characters, e.g., dQw4w9WgXcQ)

Output

Each video produces one dataset item:

Field	Type	Description
video_id	string	YouTube video ID
title	string	Video title
channel_name	string	Channel name
channel_id	string	Channel ID
duration_seconds	integer	Video duration in seconds
views	integer	View count
published_date	string	Publish date (YYYY-MM-DD)
thumbnail	string	Thumbnail URL
transcript_language	string	Language code of the transcript
transcript_language_name	string	Language name
is_auto_generated	boolean	Whether the transcript is auto-generated
available_languages	array	All available transcript languages
segments	array	Timestamped transcript segments
segment_count	integer	Number of segments
full_text	string	Full transcript as plain text
success	boolean	Whether the scrape succeeded
error	string	Error message (null if successful)

Segment format

{
    "start": "0.000",
    "dur": "3.500",
    "text": "We're no strangers to love"
}

Available languages format

{
    "code": "en",
    "name": "English",
    "is_auto_generated": true
}

Input examples

Basic usage

{
    "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"]
}

Multiple videos with language selection

{
    "videoUrls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
        "https://youtu.be/9bZkp7q19f0"
    ],
    "language": "en"
}

Spanish transcript

{
    "videoUrls": ["dQw4w9WgXcQ"],
    "language": "es",
    "includeAutoGenerated": true
}

How it works

1. For each video URL, extracts the video ID
2. Fetches the transcript using YouTube's internal transcript API
3. If a specific language is requested, tries to find it or translate to it
4. Falls back to auto-generated captions if manual ones aren't available
5. Fetches basic video metadata from the video page
6. Returns everything as a structured dataset item

Limitations

• Some videos have transcripts/captions disabled by the creator
• Age-restricted videos may not be accessible
• Private or deleted videos cannot be scraped
• Auto-generated captions may contain errors
• Translation quality depends on YouTube's translation engine