YouTube Quote Miner — Transcript Keyword Search & Clip Finder

Search YouTube channel transcripts for specific keywords, quotes, and phrases with precise timestamps. Extract clips, find quote mentions, and download video snippets from any channel — the ultimate YouTube transcript search tool built for content creators, researchers, and marketers.

Every other YouTube transcript scraper just dumps the full transcript. This Actor searches it — finding the exact moments a topic is mentioned across hundreds of videos, with clickable timestamp links, an interactive HTML report, and ready-to-use download commands.

🎯 Best For

• Content creators — find clips from any channel discussing your topic, no more scrubbing through hours of video
• Researchers — locate every mention of a subject across a creator's entire video library
• Podcast editors — search for specific quotes or sound bites across episodes
• Journalists — find what a YouTuber has said about a particular topic over time
• Marketers — discover brand mentions across YouTube channels at scale
• Agencies — build clip libraries from competitor or partner channels automatically

📊 What You Get

Each search result includes:

• Video title and channel name
• Exact timestamp (HH:MM:SS) where the keyword appears
• Clickable YouTube link that jumps to that exact moment
• Transcript excerpt with the keyword highlighted in context
• yt-dlp command to download just that clip (not the whole video)
• Mention count — how many times the keyword appears in the merged clip

Plus these output files:

File	Description
report.html	Interactive HTML report with video thumbnails and copy-to-clipboard buttons
results.csv	All results as a CSV spreadsheet for Excel or Google Sheets
download_all.bat	Windows batch script to download every clip
download_all.sh	Linux/Mac shell script to download every clip
SUMMARY	JSON summary with per-video breakdown ranked by mentions

⚙️ How It Works

Step 1 — Enter a channel and keyword

Paste one or more YouTube channel URLs and the keywords you're looking for. The Actor accepts /@handle, /channel/ID, and /c/name formats. Multiple channels and keywords can be comma-separated or one per line.

Step 2 — The Actor scans all transcripts

The Actor lists every video in the channel, fetches each transcript, and searches for your keyword. YouTube Shorts are automatically excluded (optional). Results stream to your dataset as they're found — you don't have to wait for all videos to finish.

Step 3 — Browse results and download clips

Open the HTML report to preview results with video thumbnails. Click any thumbnail to jump to that moment in YouTube. Copy the yt-dlp command to download just the clip. Export everything as CSV for spreadsheets.

🔑 Key Features

• YouTube transcript keyword search — full-text search across all video captions and transcripts
• Multiple keyword search — search for several terms at once (e.g., black hole, dark matter, gravity)
• Search multiple YouTube channels — scan across several channels in one run
• YouTube caption search — works with both auto-generated and manual captions
• Smart clip merging — if a keyword is mentioned 5 times in 30 seconds, you get 1 clip instead of 5
• Minimum clip duration filter — skip brief passing mentions, only keep extended discussions
• Exclude YouTube Shorts — automatically skip videos under 60 seconds
• Interactive HTML report — visual report with video thumbnails and one-click copy buttons
• CSV export — download results as a spreadsheet
• Batch download scripts — .bat and .sh scripts to grab all clips at once
• Timestamp links — click to jump directly to the moment in YouTube
• Abort-safe — results saved every 25 videos, so aborting early keeps everything found so far
• No API key needed — works without a YouTube Data API key
• Residential proxies — rotates IPs to avoid YouTube rate limiting

📝 Input

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
channelUrls	string	Yes	—	One or more YouTube channel URLs, comma-separated or one per line
keywords	string	Yes	—	One or more search terms, comma-separated
maxVideos	integer	No	all	Max videos to scan per channel (most recent first)
excludeShorts	boolean	No	true	Skip YouTube Shorts (videos under 60s)
minClipDurationSec	integer	No	0	Only keep clips at least this many seconds long
snippetPaddingSec	integer	No	15	Seconds of extra video before/after each match
mergeGapSec	integer	No	30	Merge mentions within this many seconds into one clip
contextLines	integer	No	3	Transcript lines of context around each match
language	string	No	en	Preferred transcript language code

Example Input

{
    "channelUrls": "https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium, https://www.youtube.com/@3blue1brown",
    "keywords": "black hole, dark matter",
    "maxVideos": 50,
    "excludeShorts": true
}

💰 Pricing

Apify charges for compute time, proxy bandwidth, and storage. Typical costs:

Videos scanned	Approximate cost
10 videos	~$0.05
50 videos	~$0.25
100 videos	~$0.50
500 videos	~$2.50

Costs vary based on transcript length, proxy usage, and how many results are found. Residential proxies (recommended for reliability) cost more than datacenter proxies. You can set a max cost per run in Apify to control spending.

📤 Sample Output

{
    "channelName": "veritasium",
    "videoTitle": "Something Strange Happens When You Follow Einstein's Math",
    "keyword": "black hole",
    "timestampFormatted": "00:02:22",
    "videoUrlAtTimestamp": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6akmv1bsz1M&t=142",
    "transcriptExcerpt": "...and when we look at the center of the galaxy we find a **black hole** that weighs four million times...",
    "mentionCount": 3,
    "ytDlpCommand": "yt-dlp --download-sections \"*00:02:07-00:02:37\" -o \"Something_Strange_00-02-07.%(ext)s\" \"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6akmv1bsz1M\""
}

🏢 Built for Teams & Automation

• API integration — trigger runs programmatically via the Apify API
• Scheduling — set up recurring searches on a daily or weekly cadence
• Webhooks — get notified when a run completes
• Multiple concurrent runs — search different channels in parallel
• Integrations — connect to Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make, and more via Apify integrations

❓ FAQ

Does it work with auto-generated captions? Yes — the Actor uses whatever transcript is available on a video, including YouTube's auto-generated captions and manually uploaded subtitle tracks.

What languages are supported? Any language with available transcripts. Set the language parameter to your preferred language code (e.g., es for Spanish, de for German, ja for Japanese). Falls back to English if unavailable.

How long does a full channel scan take? A 500-video channel takes roughly 15-25 minutes with the built-in rate limiting. You can limit with maxVideos for faster runs.

What if I abort the run early? Results are saved every 25 videos — you keep everything found so far, including the HTML report and CSV.

Can I search multiple channels at once? Yes — comma-separate the URLs or put one per line. Each channel is searched sequentially.

Can I search for multiple keywords? Yes — comma-separate the keywords. Each keyword is searched independently across all transcripts.

What happens if a video has no transcript? It's skipped gracefully. The summary tells you how many videos had transcripts and how many were skipped.

Do I need a YouTube Data API key? No. The Actor uses scrapetube to list videos and youtube-transcript-api to fetch transcripts — no Google API key required.

Why are some videos showing as blocked? YouTube rate-limits transcript requests. The Actor uses Apify residential proxies and IP rotation to minimize this. If too many consecutive videos are blocked, the Actor stops that channel early and moves on.

🔄 How Does This Compare to Other YouTube Transcript Tools?

YouTube Quote Miner vs manual transcript reading Manually reading transcripts means opening each video, enabling captions, and scrubbing through the timeline. This Actor searches hundreds of videos in minutes and gives you exact timestamps.

YouTube Quote Miner vs YouTube's built-in search YouTube search finds videos about a topic — it doesn't search within transcripts. This Actor finds the exact moment a word is spoken, even if the video title has nothing to do with it.

YouTube Quote Miner vs generic transcript scrapers Most YouTube transcript scrapers just dump the full text. This Actor searches it — finding specific keywords, highlighting matches, generating timestamps, and building download commands.

YouTube Quote Miner vs ChatGPT + YouTube AI chatbots can summarize a single video, but they can't search across hundreds of videos for specific keyword mentions with exact timecodes and clip download commands.

🔧 Technical Details

• Uses scrapetube to list channel videos (no API key needed)
• Uses youtube-transcript-api to fetch timestamped transcripts and captions
• Residential proxy rotation per request to avoid YouTube IP blocks
• 2-minute timeout on channel listing to prevent hangs
• Saves results every 25 videos (abort-safe)
• Stops a channel after 15 consecutive transcript failures to save compute
• 1.5 second delay between requests for reliability