YouTube Transcript Extractor

Extract transcripts from YouTube videos with enabled subtitles using youtube-transcript-api and Apify.

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🚀 Overview

This Apify Actor extracts available subtitles/transcripts from public YouTube videos and returns structured JSON output.

The actor:

• Accepts a YouTube video URL
• Extracts subtitles/transcripts
• Returns structured JSON
• Handles missing subtitle scenarios
• Works with subtitle-enabled videos only

Built with:

• Python
• Apify
• youtube-transcript-api
• Docker

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⚡ Features

• Fast transcript extraction
• Lightweight architecture
• Structured JSON output
• Apify-ready deployment
• Docker support
• Error handling
• Subtitle availability detection

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💼 Use Cases

AI Automation Workflows

Use transcripts for:

• AI summarization
• Blog generation
• LinkedIn content
• Email content
• Knowledge extraction

Content Repurposing

Convert YouTube videos into:

• Articles
• Notes
• Social posts
• Documentation

Research & Learning

Extract subtitles for:

• Learning systems
• Search indexing
• AI agents
• RAG pipelines

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🏗️ Project Structure

.
├── .actor/
│   ├── actor.json
│   └── input_schema.json
│
├── app.py
├── main.py
├── requirements.txt
├── Dockerfile
└── README.md

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🔧 Input

{
  "youtube_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"
}

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📤 Output

Successful Response

{
  "success": true,
  "video_id": "abc123xyz",
  "transcript": [
    {
      "text": "Hello world",
      "start": 0.0,
      "duration": 2.0
    }
  ],
  "full_text": "Hello world"
}

---

Subtitles Disabled

{
  "success": false,
  "video_id": "abc123xyz",
  "message": "Subtitles are not enabled in the given YouTube video."
}

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⚠️ Supported Videos

This actor works only for:

• Public YouTube videos
• Videos with subtitles/captions enabled

This actor does NOT support:

• Videos without subtitles
• Private videos
• Restricted videos

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🛠️ Tech Stack

Component	Technology
Runtime	Python
Platform	Apify
Transcript Extraction	youtube-transcript-api
Containerization	Docker

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▶️ Run Locally

Install Dependencies

$pip install -r requirements.txt

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Run Project

$python main.py

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☁️ Deploy to Apify

Login

$apify login

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Push Actor

$apify push

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📊 Workflow

YouTube URL
      ↓
Extract Video ID
      ↓
Fetch Transcript
      ↓
Generate Structured JSON
      ↓
Return Output

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✅ Error Handling

Handled scenarios:

• Invalid YouTube URL
• Missing subtitles
• Disabled captions
• No transcript found
• Private/unavailable videos

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🔒 Security

• No API keys required
• No cookies required
• No browser automation
• No credential storage

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📈 Future Improvements

Potential future enhancements:

• Batch URL processing
• Transcript summarization
• Translation workflows
• Keyword extraction
• Transcript export formats

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📄 License

MIT License