YouTube Transcript Actor

📌 Introduction

🎯 What is this actor?

The YouTube Transcript Actor is a powerful tool designed to extract transcripts from YouTube videos. It takes a YouTube video URL as input and returns the transcript in a structured format.

🚀 Key Features

• Extract transcripts from YouTube videos
• Support for multiple languages
• Option to include timestamps
• Clean text formatting
• JSON output for easy integration

🔍 Use Cases

• Content creators can generate subtitles for their videos
• Researchers can perform sentiment analysis or text processing on video transcripts
• Accessibility advocates can make video content more accessible

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📥 Inputs

📝 What does the actor take in?

The YouTube Transcript Actor accepts the following inputs:

• startUrls (required): A list of YouTube video URLs to extract transcripts from.
• includeTimestamps (optional): A toggle to include timestamps in the output (Yes/No).

🔒 Restrictions

• You must provide a valid YouTube URL.
• Some videos do not have transcripts available (e.g., live streams, private videos).

✅ Example Input

{
    "startUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPMJOaD-eZk"],
    "includeTimestamps": "Yes"
}

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📤 Outputs

📝 What does the actor return?

The actor produces:

• A clean transcript (default: plain text)
• Timestamps (optional)
• JSON format for structured data processing

⚠️ Restrictions

• If a video has no transcript available, the result will be null.

✅ Example Outputs

🔹 Without Timestamps (includeTimestamps: "No")

{
    "transcript": "We have skewed the lines. We are no longer raising women in our culture..."
}

🔹 With Timestamps (includeTimestamps: "Yes")

{
    "transcript": [
        { "timestamp": "0:01", "text": "We've skewed the lines." },
        {
            "timestamp": "0:04",
            "text": "We are no longer raising women in our culture."
        }
    ]
}

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⚙️ How to Use

🏁 Running the Actor

1. Log in or Sign up on Apify.
2. Create a new task and select "YouTube Transcript Actor".
3. Enter the YouTube video URL(s) in the startUrls field.
4. Choose whether to include timestamps (includeTimestamps: "Yes" or "No").
5. Start the task and receive your transcript in JSON format.

📊 Interpreting Results

• If timestamps are enabled, the transcript is returned as an array of objects ([{ timestamp, text }]).
• If timestamps are disabled, the transcript is returned as plain text.

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🛠️ Troubleshooting

❌ Common Issues & Fixes

Issue	Possible Cause	Solution
Transcript not found	Video has no transcript available	Choose another video
Invalid URL error	URL is incorrect or missing	Ensure the URL is valid
Empty transcript	YouTube restricted the transcript	Try another video or region

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🔗 Additional Resources

• Apify Platform
• Check out my profile

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🙌 Acknowledgments

This actor was built with the support of the Apify community and the YouTube API. Special thanks to all contributors! 🎉