Youtube View & Transcript Generator

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📋 Table of Contents

• 🚨 Important Notice
• 🎯 Overview
• ⚠️ Responsible Use
• ✨ Key Features
• 🚀 Quick Start
• ⚙️ Configuration
• 📝 Transcription Extraction
• 🔗 Webhook Integration
• 🔄 How It Works
• 🌐 Proxy Recommendations
• 🛠️ Technical Details
• ⚠️ Important Notes
• 📚 Resources
• 🏁 Getting Started

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🚨 Important Notice

	🏠 Residential Proxies	🏢 Datacenter Proxies
Bot Detection	✅ Very Low	⚠️ Higher Risk
Success Rate	✅ High	⚠️ Moderate
View Quality	✅ More likely counted	⚠️ May be filtered
Trust Level	✅ Real home IPs	⚠️ Known datacenter ranges
Recommendation	✅ HIGHLY RECOMMENDED	⚠️ Use with caution

💡 Pro Tip: Always use residential proxies when available for maximum effectiveness and legitimacy.

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🎯 Overview

This Actor provides two powerful features that can be used independently or together:

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⚠️ Responsible Use

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✨ Key Features

Feature	Description
📝 Transcription Extraction	Extract transcripts for ALL available languages with timestamps
🔗 Webhook Support	Send transcription data to your server via POST request
📸 Screenshot Capture	Visual proof before/after video starts, and optionally when paused
🎭 Unique Fingerprints	Each browser session has different characteristics
🌐 IP Rotation	Each visit uses a different proxy IP address
🔄 Auto-Retry System	Automatic retry on bot detection with fresh sessions
⏱️ Randomized Timing	Variable watch times and pause durations
🖱️ Human Simulation	Mouse movements, scrolling, and natural delays

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🚀 Quick Start

Transcription Only (Recommended for Testing)

{
  "urls": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
    }
  ],
  "enableViews": false,
  "enableTranscription": true,
  "includeTimestamps": true
}

View Generation Only

{
  "urls": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOUR_VIDEO_ID"
    }
  ],
  "enableViews": true,
  "enableTranscription": false,
  "viewCounts": 10
}

Both Features Together

{
  "urls": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOUR_VIDEO_ID"
    }
  ],
  "enableViews": true,
  "enableTranscription": true,
  "viewCounts": 5,
  "webhookUrl": "https://your-server.com/webhook"
}

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⚙️ Configuration

Feature Toggles

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
urls	array	—	Required. YouTube video URL(s) to process
enableViews	boolean	true	Enable view generation feature
enableTranscription	boolean	false	Enable transcription extraction feature

⚠️ Note: At least one feature must be enabled (views or transcription).

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📝 Transcription Extraction

How It Works

The transcription feature extracts captions directly from YouTube's UI by:

1. Opening the video page and dismissing consent dialogs
2. Clicking "Show transcript" to open the transcript panel
3. Extracting all segments with timestamps
4. Switching languages to extract ALL available translations

Output Structure

When preferredLanguage is empty (default), the Actor extracts all available languages:

{
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up",
  "channelName": "Rick Astley",
  "videoDuration": 213,
  "hasTranscript": true,
  "languagesExtracted": 6,
  "languagesAvailable": 6,
  "totalSegments": 738,
  "totalCharacters": 25110,
  "transcripts": [
    {
      "code": "en",
      "name": "English",
      "isAutoGenerated": false,
      "transcript": [
        { "start": 0, "duration": 0, "text": "We're no strangers to love" },
        { "start": 4, "duration": 0, "text": "You know the rules and so do I" }
      ],
      "fullText": "We're no strangers to love You know the rules...",
      "segmentCount": 123,
      "characterCount": 4185
    },
    {
      "code": "de-DE",
      "name": "German (Germany)",
      "isAutoGenerated": false,
      "transcript": [...],
      "fullText": "...",
      "segmentCount": 120,
      "characterCount": 4200
    }
  ],
  "timestamp": "2024-01-23T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Timestamp Formatting

With includeTimestamps: true, the fullText field includes timestamps:

[00:00] We're no strangers to love
[00:04] You know the rules and so do I
[00:09] A full commitment's what I'm thinking of

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🔗 Webhook Integration

Send transcription data directly to your server as soon as it's extracted.

Configuration

{
  "enableTranscription": true,
  "webhookUrl": "https://your-server.com/api/transcripts",
  "webhookId": "order-12345"
}

Webhook Payload

The webhook receives a POST request with Content-Type: application/json:

{
  "webhookId": "order-12345",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up",
  "channelName": "Rick Astley",
  "videoDuration": 213,
  "hasTranscript": true,
  "languagesExtracted": 6,
  "transcripts": [...],
  "timestamp": "2024-01-23T12:00:00.000Z"
}

💡 Note: The webhookId field is only included if you provide a value. Use it to correlate requests on your server.

Webhook-Only Mode

For efficient transcript extraction without storing data:

{
  "urls": [{ "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" }],
  "enableViews": false,
  "enableTranscription": true,
  "webhookUrl": "https://your-server.com/webhook",
  "webhookId": "unique-request-id"
}

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🔄 How It Works

Process Flow

Dataset Output

When both features are enabled, the dataset contains separate entries:

Entry	Type	Content
000000001.json	Transcription	All languages, webhook data
000000002.json	View #1	Screenshots, watch time
000000003.json	View #2	Screenshots, watch time
...	...	...

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🌐 Proxy Recommendations

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🛠️ Technical Details

Built With

Technology	Purpose
Crawlee	Web automation framework for browser session management
Playwright	Browser automation (Chromium)
Apify SDK	Platform integration and data storage

Anti-Detection Features

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⚠️ Important Notes

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📚 Resources

Documentation

• Crawlee + Apify Platform Guide — crawlee.dev/docs/guides/apify-platform
• PlaywrightCrawler Documentation — crawlee.dev/api/playwright-crawler
• Crawlee Examples — crawlee.dev/docs/examples/playwright-crawler

Tutorials

• Node.js Tutorials (Apify Academy) — docs.apify.com/academy/node-js
• Scraping SPAs with Playwright — blog.apify.com/scraping-spas-playwright
• Scaling Puppeteer and Playwright — blog.apify.com/scaling-puppeteer-playwright

Integrations

• Zapier, Make, GitHub, Google Drive — apify.com/integrations
• Video: Getting Data via Apify API — YouTube Tutorial

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🏁 Getting Started

Run on Apify Platform

For complete setup instructions, see the Apify documentation.

Local Development

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💰 Pay Per Event Billing

This Actor uses the Apify Pay Per Event pricing model. You are charged only for the events the run actually triggers, and you control the total cost from the Apify Console when starting a run.

Event	Type	Description
apify-actor-start	Synthetic (auto)	Charged automatically when the Actor run starts. Apify covers the cost of the first 5 seconds of compute.
apify-default-dataset-item	Synthetic (auto)	Charged automatically for each record pushed to the default dataset (one per view result and one per transcription result).
youtube-view	Custom	Charged once per view-generation request handled.
youtube-transcription	Custom	Charged once per transcription-extraction request handled.
screenshot-saved	Custom	Charged once for every screenshot stored in the key-value store (page-loaded, after-play, paused, bot-detected, overlay-blocked).
retry-event	Custom	Charged once per retry attempt on a failed request.
event-proxy	Custom	Charged once per run when basic Apify Proxy is used (no proxy group).
event-proxy-group	Custom	Charged once per run when Apify Proxy is used with a proxy group (e.g. RESIDENTIAL).

Controlling your spend

When starting the Actor in the Apify Console you can cap a run's cost via:

• Max total charge (USD) — the run exits early when this cap is reached. Exposed as ACTOR_MAX_TOTAL_CHARGE_USD to the Actor.
• Max paid dataset items — caps how many results you pay for. Exposed as ACTOR_MAX_PAID_DATASET_ITEMS to the Actor.

When a per-event cap is reached the Actor logs a warning and stops issuing further charges of that type, so you never spend past the limit you set. If a youtube-view or youtube-transcription cap is hit mid-run the crawler aborts gracefully so queued requests don't keep firing failing charges.

Disabling screenshot charges

If you don't need any screenshots, set captureScreenshots: false, screenshotPause: false, and screenshotOnBotDetection: false in your input — no screenshot-saved events will fire.

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