Facebook Video Transcript Extractor

This Actor extracts transcripts from Facebook video pages. It's designed to help you obtain text transcripts from videos posted on Facebook's platform.

Features

• Extracts transcript data from Facebook video pages
• Handles proper request headers to mimic a real browser
• Provides detailed error reporting
• Works with Apify proxy to avoid IP blocks and rate limiting
• Simple configuration through INPUT_SCHEMA

Usage

Input Configuration

The Actor accepts the following input parameters:

Example input:

{
  "url": "https://web.facebook.com/briantylercohen/videos/1350752639547526",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Running the Actor

1. Apify Platform: The easiest way to run the Actor is through the Apify platform. Just search for "Facebook Video Transcript Extractor" in the Apify Store.

2. Command Line (via Apify CLI):

   apify run -p
   

3. API: You can also run the Actor programmatically via the Apify API.

Output

The Actor saves extracted transcripts to the default dataset. Each item in the dataset has the following structure:

{
  "url": "https://web.facebook.com/briantylercohen/videos/1350752639547526",
  "transcript": "This is the extracted transcript text...",
}

In case of errors or if no transcript is found, the output will look like:

{
  "url": "https://web.facebook.com/briantylercohen/videos/1350752639547526",
  "transcript": null,
  "error": "Error message or 'No transcript found in the page'"
}

Limitations

• This Actor relies on the current structure of Facebook's video pages. If Facebook changes their page structure or how transcripts are embedded, the Actor may need to be updated.
• Facebook may rate-limit or block requests that appear automated. Using the Apify proxy helps mitigate this issue.
• Not all Facebook videos have transcripts available.

Technical Details

The Actor performs the following steps:

1. Takes the input URL and configures the HTTP request with browser-like headers
2. Fetches the HTML content of the Facebook video page
3. Parses the page to locate script tags containing transcript data
4. Extracts the transcript using a regex pattern
5. Saves the results to the Apify dataset

Dependencies

• axios: For making HTTP requests
• jsdom: For parsing and traversing the HTML
• apify: The Apify SDK for integrating with the Apify platform

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.